


Events of Specific Significance

by Deejaymil



Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: ...which actually changes everything, Alternate Universe, Awkward Romance, Canon-Typical Violence, Domestic Fluff, F/M, Family, Friendship, Love, Marriage, Non-Explicit Sex, One Big Happy Family, Parent-Child Relationship, Slice of Life, The one where the only thing that changes is that Spencer is allowed to be happy, light conflict
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-03
Updated: 2018-08-19
Packaged: 2019-02-10 02:48:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 69,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12902322
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deejaymil/pseuds/Deejaymil
Summary: On her twenty-first birthday, Maeve meets an astonishing man with a waxed-paper boat. It feels significant.She has no idea just how much.





	1. 1999

**Author's Note:**

> Maeve and Spencer meet in college and GOOD THINGS HAPPEN FROM THERE. Canon? Never heard of her.
> 
> _We all have such fateful objects—it may be a recurrent landscape in one case, a number in another—carefully chosen by the gods to attract events of specific significance for us: here shall John always stumble; there shall Jane's heart always break._
> 
> **Vladimir Nabokov, _Lolita_**

**January**

On her twenty-first birthday, Maeve does nothing of significance. It’s a dull day. Her parents can’t make it until late that night, it’s inconveniently a Wednesday so all her friends are indisposed, and she’s stuck at work for the entire duration. As a birthday treat, one lonely whimsy to get her through the morose reminder that it probably only goes downhill from here, she sweet-talks her boss into an extra-long lunch break and finds her way to a secluded park that she loves for the wide berth of trees circling a shaded pond.

Clouds gather overhead warningly. The day is cool. She sits on the dewy slope with her knees in the grass and watches two boys trying to make paper boats float on the choppy surface of the pond. It’s a quiet, uneventful moment of a quiet, uneventful day in a quiet, uneventful life; she can’t help but pick at her apple tea cake, spilling crumbs onto the tattered corner of the _Happy Birthday Maeve!!!_ sticker they’d foisted on her at work, and wonder if she’s boring. Boring, dull old Maeve Donovan: PhD student at twenty-one, daughter of geneticists, future geneticist, eternally lonely.

It’s really only downhill from here.

By the pond, the boys have been joined by a tall man in what appears to be his grandfather’s clothes. Maeve hides a smile as he hovers awkwardly above them, hands moving quickly as he tries to explain something to the bemused looking children. _Some kook_ , she assumes, eyeing his battered cardigan and corduroy trousers, a shoulder tote abandoned on the grass nearby. She wonders if he’s lost. She wonders if he works at the college. She wonders if he prefers coffee or tea, if he caught the bus today, if he worries that he’s becoming insignificant.

And then she stops wondering and just pays attention, because he’s taken up the waxed paper the boys are using and is showing them how to make a boat. Nimble fingers work quickly and he’s quiet now, crouched over his work while the boys giggle and chatter amongst themselves. Thunder rattles overhead. Rain begins to patter down, Maeve standing and drawing her umbrella against the weather. The broad shoulders of his tan cardigan hunch up and darken as he’s caught in the downpour, but he doesn’t stop. Just looks up with his head tilted curiously as the boys scamper away, vanishing with waves and shouted _thank you_ s.

Despite his audience absconding, this curious man continues his work. Maeve watches. Her watch beeps. She should go back to work.

She should.

Instead, she walks towards over there and holds the umbrella over him as he finishes his boat. It’s smaller than it had seemed from a distance, dwarfed by his wide hands. He looks up at his sudden shelter, surprised. He’s pretty. A sharp-jawed face with cheekbones to die for and hazel eyes that catch her and trap her and make her feel a little underdressed, which is ridiculous since he’s dressed twenty years out of his time.

“Thank you,” he says politely, and his voice is gorgeous too.

Instead of being brave, of being not _boring_ , she asks, “Does it float?” and nods to the boat. He looks confused for a second, before laughing and extending a long arm from the circular world she’s created in the middle of the rain-swept park, placing the boat on the pond.

It does.

“A lucky boat,” he comments, plucking it back from the water and standing, knocking his head against the umbrella and blushing at his clumsiness. She wants to respond. She does, but he’s pretty and nervous and she’s always been shy; now that he’s looking directly at her, she doesn’t know what to say except a laugh that’s drowned out by another roll of thunder. The boat is extended to her and she takes it in the hand still holding the wrapping from her muffin; “For you,” he mumbles, stepping away from and out of the shelter of the umbrella, “Happy Birthday, Maeve.”

And he’s gone, leaving her standing alone.

She doesn’t expect to see him again, but she still keeps the boat hanging from a hook on her ceiling above her desk. It bobs and waves with the breeze from her open window, always more alive when it rains.

It feels significant.

 

**February**

He’s lonely. It’s something he’s grown accustomed to, this overbearing misery of isolation, but that doesn’t mean he welcomes it. When he goes to class, he sits at the back, by himself. When he goes to lectures, he’s similarly seated. When he goes back to his dorm; the very same. He regrets rooming alone.

“Are you okay, Spencer?” his PhD advisor asks him one afternoon; he’s sitting in the labs moodily helping her with an experiment she’s running on the genes of mice. “You’ve been quiet lately.”

“Just tired,” he replies softly.

That night, he goes to the movies. He watches _October Sky_ and falls asleep in his half-eaten popcorn. He doesn’t mind; there’s no one to discuss it with afterwards, anyway. He goes home and falls asleep; alone.

The next day, he asks to be moved to a shared dorm, despite this meaning he has to share with the undergrads. 

He’s seventeen and lonely. He thinks only sometimes about the girl in the park.

 

**March**

Sometimes, she goes back to the park. She’s not sure what she’s looking for here. Something newer, something _interesting_. Something more. She loves her work. Her passion for her genetic studies is without bounds, and she knows she’ll be happy following this career path for the rest of her life. She’s aware that she’s a woman in a STEM track and she’s going to be expected to be focused, her ambition narrowed forward. But there’s more to life than what’s between her ears. Something a lot of the men in her doctorate studies would do well to remember, she sometimes thinks.

There’s more to life than being intelligent, successful, and alone.

Today, there are children by the pond. They have a boat made of plastic with a dinky little motor chugging it along. Their father sits near them, guiding the boat through the returning spring ducks as the children run alongside and cheer. It’s a lovely boat. All blue and purple and trimmed in silver. As a child, if her father had been inclined to play with electric boats, she’d have adored it.

These days, she thinks she prefers the paper kind.

 

**April**

Ethan, as far as dormmates go, is probably not the greatest. He plays his music loudly, is in several bands of varying intensities, and extensively smokes weed in their tiny, barely-ventilated room. He’s also incredibly, surprisingly intelligent, which begins a fierce rivalry between the two that Ethan, at his worst, still easily keeps up with. It surprises no one as much as it does Spencer that, in a very short time, they become very good friends.

“You know, it’s annoying that you’re seventeen and _this_ smart,” Ethan is grumbling one day, paging through a textbook and idly adding nipples to all the photographic inlays.

“You know, it’s weird that you’re nineteen and _this_ immature,” Spencer chides him, taking his textbook back and fighting the urge to make the nipples more anatomically correct. “Grow up, Ethan.”

Ethan just grins.

Having a friend is nothing like what Spencer expected; it’s far, far better.

 

**May**

Every month without fail since high-school, Maeve makes time for these lunches. Sometimes, her friends make the time also. As the years have gone on, they also sometimes haven’t. It’s okay. She doesn’t mind. Life moves on and people move on with it: Josh has a new baby, Carly’s career has taken her down to New Orleans, Ann’s having a Bad Day and can’t face leaving the house. They’re all valid, valid reasons for why, today, Maeve is sitting alone. She shreds a paper napkin into the pancakes she’d bought out of some childish whimsy, a paperback propped between her plate and glass of orange juice. The book is her refusal to be upset about this; the napkin is probably a sign that she’s failing in that refusal. It’s Neil Gaiman’s _The Graveyard Book,_ and the first time she’d read it, she was three days away from meeting her best friend. She misses her. It’s been eight months since they’d last spoken, which is probably too long to rekindle the connection.

“Wherever you go, take yourself with you,” she reads out loud, and then feels silly for doing so. A flight of fancy that she’s far too old to be engaging in, especially if this it and she’s as adult as she’s ever gonna get.

She closes the book. Lunch is over.

Maybe next month.

 

**June**

Sometimes, he goes back to the park. His scheduled visit with his mom has fallen through this summer, which adds a morose kind of air to his holiday. Since he’d expected to be in Vegas for the duration of the break, he hasn’t organized summer housing or to work for the college over the period beyond what he’s required to do to keep his stipend.

Basically, he’s screwed.

“Only one solution then,” Ethan announces when Spencer tells him. “Pack your shit, kiddo, you’re coming to stay with me. How do you feel about New Orleans?”

It’s his first real holiday. Ethan’s already making plans to ensure that it won’t be his last.

New Orleans, Spencer thinks, is _wonderful._

**July**

She visits her parents in the break. They’re doing fine, doing great. Distant as always, but she’s used to that by now. Sometimes she wonders if she’s an only child because, as they’ve always stated, of them being ‘completely satisfied’ with how she’d turned out, or if there’s something a bit exhausting about paying attention to the world long enough to raise a child. They love her, dearly, and she knows this, but there’s being loved and then there’s _being_ loved, and dinnertime conversation never delving beyond genetics and Maeve’s studies into anything deeper—like, are you happy? or is this what you want? —feels… lonely. But she’s far too old to entertain thoughts about her parents not understanding her, so she sweeps it aside and smiles politely.

The fall comes at dessert. The conversation lapses. Unlike most families, it’s not a companionable silence. They’re a little unsettled because she’d murmured that her doctorate studies were unlikely to be fast-tracked further, as they’d hoped she would be, and she can feel a thrum of disappointment from her father that she’s not achieving highly enough.

Never rebellious, rarely brash; she’s both these things in this moment as she blurts out, “I met a man in the park.”

They stare at her. A spoon clicks on her mother’s bowl as she lowers it gently, looking confused.

“A man?” her mother repeats blankly.

“What for?” asks her father, half a smile on his mouth as though it’s a joke, silly Maeve, messing around. _She’s always had a sense of humour, our Maeve, god knows where she gets it._

“A man,” Maeve repeats weakly, and puts her spoon down too. Suddenly, she’s not hungry at all. “I think he might have been nice.” The silence is painful. To her horror, she’s dangerously close to tears and entirely unsure of why—she doubts it has anything to do with the man with the paper boat and everything to do with not knowing what she’s doing or why anymore. And there’s very little hidden about crying at the table.

Her father breaks the silence first, coughing and managing weakly, “Would you like to talk about him?”

It’s a concession. Him trying to make her feeling better.

It works. “Thanks, Dad,” she murmurs, and begins with the rain.

 

**August**

There’s a carnival coming to town next month, just before the mad rush of grant applications begins. It’ll be cutting it close, but Ethan is determined to drag him to it before they drive back together.

“We can go on the Ferris wheel, it’ll be romantic,” Ethan quips as he shows Spencer how to work the aging lawn mower so they can help Ethan’s gran with her yard. There’s already a tear in Spencer’s shirt, two cuts on his calf, and a rose thorn stuck in his palm—he eyes the mower warily and wonders if he’ll make it out alive. “Or, we buy two tickets and give one to a girl of your choice.” He pauses. “Or guy. Whatever boats your float.”

“Carnival games are all rigged,” Spencer responds evenly. He doesn’t want to go.

The next morning, he’s harassed over morning pancakes. “Come on, come _on_ ,” Ethan grumbles. “You never do fun things! We’ve never done a fun thing together, not once since I met you. We can get your fortune told!”

“I really don’t want to,” Spencer says.

Ethan’s gran tells Ethan to leave him alone, but Spencer doubts that will stall him.

Three nights later, they’re flopped on the riverside watching fish skirt the bank. It’s the hour before sunset and the threat of mosquitoes looms, despite the liberal repellent they’re both coated with. The smell of it is thick and almost biting, an unfamiliar scent that Spencer is sure he’s going to associate solely with this night from now on. When birds call, Ethan quietly names them for him. Spencer will return the favour, when the stars come out. They’re tired and hot and almost-not-quite bored.

“You really don’t want to go, do you?” Ethan asks suddenly, tilting his head back and watching Spencer. There’s an unlit smoke between his lips and a smudge of dirt on his cheek. Spencer rolls onto his belly, feeling his knees sinking a bit into the boggy turf, and grins to think that he’s never really had dirty knees before now. “To the carnival?”

“I really don’t,” Spencer replies.

Ethan is quiet for a moment. “Well, how about we leave early instead and take the scenic route home?” he says. “Maybe drop in on some museums, or something. Something you like.” Stunned, Spencer stares at him. He doesn’t say anything, but his surprise must be written on his face, because Ethan adds, “It’s never really been a problem that I don’t really take no for an answer because I’ve never cared before… but you’re not so good at even saying no to begin with. And I don’t… yeah, I guess I don’t really want to fuck this up, okay?” He’s flushed and awkward and Spencer does him a favour and looks away, but that doesn’t stop him from hearing the final, mumbled, “I’ve never really had a friend I’ve wanted to keep before now.”

“I’ve never had a friend,” Spencer states plainly. A mosquito finds his bare arm and bites down, ending their riverside relaxation.

They don’t go to the carnival. They do take the long way home.

Spencer hopes this could be the start of new things.

**September**

September takes her down to New Orleans and this moment, drunk with Carly as they stumble through a carnival that’s cheap and nasty and brilliantly fun. She feels, right now: silly and alive and not even bothered that she’s a speck in the universe.

“You gotta stop driving yourself so hard, love,” Carly shrieks at her, the gin loosening them both up and spilling their hurts out onto each other. Carly’s boyfriend cheated on her again, she’s put on more pounds than she’s comfortable with, and she’s worried her grandma might be dying. Big hurts, small hurts, all Maeve has to offer up is ‘I’m not good enough’. And Carly rebuts: “You’re a damn smart chick, always have been. I think your problem is that you’re alone too often.”

“I’m surrounded by people,” Maeve says, because she is. They’re pressed against the side of the carnival walk, her shoulder brushing the grubby tent of a fortune-teller. As though they both become aware of it, they turn and look. “Also, I’m not going in there.”

“Lame,” Carly complains, followed by, “yeah, maybe, but are they people who matter? I’ll give you a fortune, if you’re too science to let that lady do it—” She swoops in close, wraps them together and grins widely—Maeve remembers, very suddenly, being a teenager with every hope in the world: “—something great is gonna stagger into your life and you’re gonna let it stagger right on out, because you’re too busy being mad that you’re not top-shit to realise that sometimes average is just fine.”

Maeve blinks. Considers that. Considers that she’s had too much carnival food and too much gin and not enough sitting down.

“That kinda fell apart at the end there, didn’t it?” she says instead of agreeing, and Carly laughs and drags her away.

They don’t go into the fortune-teller’s tent. Maeve’s glad; she thinks she’d preferred to be surprised.

**October**

Ethan forces him to celebrate his birthday. That’s concerning, because if there’s one thing that Spencer has learned about Ethan, it’s that the man’s plans never come without _layers_. The stated plan is that he and Ethan have one alcoholic drink each in their dorm-room to celebrate his ‘coming of age’. That’s the stated plan; Ethan is adamant that eighteen means breaking the law, in one way or another. Spence declines the joint he’s offered as he drinks his lukewarm beer, but the tiny window in their room doesn’t exactly offer what he’d call adequate airflow. He declines the joint, but he’s pretty sure he’s half-stoned anyway just from the second-hand smoke. Which could explain how weird the night has gotten after the layers of Ethan’s plan come into play.

“Am I drunk?” he asks Ethan mournfully, trying to count on his wavering fingers just how many beers that one had turned into.

“Nah,” Ethan reassures him, rapping his knuckles with the paintbrush he’s wielding, “now, stop moving. I’m going to smear your whiskers.”

Spencer nods. That makes sense.

Wait.

What?

The layers unravel. Spencer, as it turns out, is dangerously pliable when five and a half beers in. And Ethan is dangerously well-prepared.

He never had a chance.

It’s three days until Halloween but Ethan’s found an early party; Spencer finds himself face-painted, wrestled into a brown sweater and slacks, and bedecked in a collar and fluffy ears. Before he can question what’s become of his sensible celebrations, he’s Scooby Doo to Ethan’s Shaggy and he finds himself propped up in a corner of his first ever house party with yet another beer and the vaguest sense that he’s lost control of his life.

The night begins to pass in shuddering, stop-motion blurs. Ethan’s there. Then he’s not. Someone is teasing his fluffy dog ears. At some point, he blinks and finds himself sitting on a staircase in a narrow, darkened hallway. Alone. It’s peaceful. He decides to stay there, right up until someone walks out of a door beside him and falls over his spread-eagled legs with a gentle squeak and a _thump_.

“Oh no,” says the costumed scientist his legs had almost assassinated, kneeling in her spilled drink as he tries to help her and instead tips onto the ground beside her. “Who put you here?”

“Shaggy,” says Spencer sadly, and then realizes that he has no idea who he’s talking to and tries to explain: “Ah, my dormmate, Shag—Ethan. I’m… hello. Sorry. Legs.”

She stares at him. “Well, hello, Legs,” she teases, and he recognises her. The same cat-eyes in a smiling face; the same shy smile that’s almost uncertain to be pleased by him. She’s in a lab coat and goggles today, a purple scarf wrapped around her throat, and she’s lacking the umbrella or the birthday sticker; he remembers his boat and blushes. “I know you. You’re the man with the boat.”

Spencer doesn’t answer; just blushes more. His voice seems to have abandoned him, his shame pooling deep like the beer they’re still kneeling in, right until she laughs softly and helps him up.

“Where’s your Ethan?” she asks him, her hand twitching like she’s going to fix his crooked ears, “I’ll take you back, Scooby.”

Morosely, he admits: “I don’t even know who Scooby Doo _is_ ,” and her face turns wide, surprised, right before she begins to laugh. Helplessly, and he thinks she might have forgiven him for his legs, but is too swirly to ask for confirmation.

“Maybe some air,” she says instead, and leads him to the backdoor and out into the autumn night.

When he blinks again, his head is between his knees and there’s a warm hand rubbing concentric circles in between his shoulderblades, someone sitting tucked against his side.

“Urgh,” he says, his stomach lurching. And, miserably, “Some birthday.”

He thinks it’s Ethan.

It’s not.

The hand pauses. “It’s your birthday?” says a lilting voice, and he twitches up to find the woman from the park sitting there, her gaze fixed on him. It’s mortifying. Why is he never at his best around her? As though confirming this feeling, his stomach makes a terrific grumbling sound and cramps tightly. He whimpers.

“Maeve,” he whispers, before wincing. Way to sound creepy.

“Oh, you do remember,” she says, in that same gentle voice, and in the light from the house he sees her blush a little. They’re under a tree—poplar, he recognises—, their backs to the trunk, and the night is too cool for his frazzled brain. “I’m sorry, I can’t remember…”

“Spencer,” he says, and has to lean back. “I’m Spencer. Hi.”

And she’s there, a warm shoulder supporting him, as she says, “Well, Happy Birthday, Spencer,” and brushes her lips against his cheek. “That’s for your birthday.”

The rest of the night is a hazy blur of being passed from Maeve to Ethan, of being half-carried home and tipped into bed, of waking still drunk in the early hours of the morning with his pillow make-up smeared and a candy-cane scent thick from the purple scarf he’s, for some reason, wearing.

And a distant memory: _And this is for the boat._

He sleeps with the scarf cuddled close and a smile on his lips, and Ethan only teases him a little.

**November**

Work is dreary today. She’s propped at her desk over a mug of hot chocolate, staring blankly out the window to the treeless verge outside, when someone coughs overhead. Probably the man bringing over the box of genetic samples from MIT, annoyingly late—

Bad mood cemented, she looks up and blinks.

Blinks again.

He’s balancing a sealed cooler box designed for biological cargo, his eyes wide and shocked as he looks down on her. Dressed today for the weather, a warm coat and gloves and… and her purple scarf.

“Maeve, hello,” says Spencer, and then turns adorably pink.

Maeve tries to answer, to be normal and polite and well-presented, and instead goes, “Um,” because he’s knocked every sensible thought out of her head.

“Oh.” To her horror, the pink turns redder and bypasses cute to go on to embarrassed. “You don’t remember me. We, um, met… at the park, once, uh, hang on—” _Thunk,_ goes the cooler on her desk and he grabs the paperwork from the top and, faster than before, folds it into a rough facsimile of her boat at home. “—if, um, if this helps you remember…”

The boat is deposited gently on the cooler. She stares at it, looks at him, and then promptly realizes she’s been sitting here without saying a word.

“I’m supposed to sign that,” she says dumbly.

He stares at her, all woeful hazel eyes with his hair falling into his face, crestfallen. And she can’t think—she’s never been good at easy conversation and she _hadn’t_ been expecting him today—doesn’t think he’d expected her here either, judging by the way he’s falling over himself—so instead of putting her foot in her mouth again, she unfolds the boat, signs the bottom, and adds a sticky note from her drawer to the carbon copy she hands him.

“Bye,” he practically yelps, skittering out of the door, elbow banging on the doorframe painfully on the way out. “Ow, shi—”

The door shuts between them.

“Who was that?” Chantelle asks, picking up the creased and folded receipt-turned boat-turned-receipt once more. Maeve doesn’t answer. She’s too busy leaning over and watching out the window as a tall, hurried figure skids to a stop on the sidewalk outside and pauses to read the note she’s attached to his documents.

_I do remember you. I hope you like the scarf._

He turns and looks and she ducks back down. The note was brave enough.

She’s sure that she’s too mousey to face him again.

 

**December**

It’s ridiculous. It’s impetuous. Most of all, it’s not _her_.

It’s also, she thinks, significant. A significant event in her insignificant life.

It’s an email, the address of which she finds on the paperwork that still bears the creases of her original waxed-paper boat. She sits at home on her desktop and watches the boat hang still, the window closed in the dead of winter. She thinks about the man who made it, and she thinks about how their paths keep crossing. Something so opportune… well, it has to be significant, right?

She finds the email address, written hastily on a torn-up sheet of scrap paper, and boots her PC.

And she writes:

> **Subject:** A Man with a Waxed-Paper Boat
> 
> **Date:** Thurs, 2 Dec 1999 18:25:13
> 
> **From:** “Maeve Donovan” <sherlockneversaidelementary@yahoo.com>
> 
> **To:** “Dr. Spencer Reid” <mynameisnobody@AOL.com>
> 
> \----------message contents----------
> 
> Dear Dr. Reid,
> 
> You may remember me as the girl from the park, with the umbrella. Or perhaps the Halloween party where I was attending much as I am, in lab-coat sporting a purple scarf, which is now in your possession. I’m almost sure that you remember me from my workplace; you created me a boat out of very little, a facsimile of the one I look upon now, from our first meeting.
> 
> You may not remember me. In case you do not, my name is Maeve Donovan. I find myself fascinated by the memory of a man building a boat out of very little. I would love to get to know him.
> 
> Please respond via this message if you would share this sentiment
> 
> Warm regards, Maeve Donovan

And then something remarkable happens. Hours later, she’s reading a book and regretting her brashness when there’s a minute sound from her tinny speakers.

She looks over and blinks

_One Message Received._


	2. 2000

**January**

For her birthday, they meet.

Properly this time. It’s not a date, Spencer determinedly tells Ethan, and then he goes and gets his suit tailored. The whole time, he’s thinking about her, panicking about his hair, his tie, whether he should drop more money on a fancy pair of dress shoes or hope that his suit and tie offset the casualness of his lucky pair of converse. He buys her a book for her birthday— _The Narrative of John Smith_ —just in case he’s not an adequate enough gift, which he really doubts he is. There’s also a bouquet of flowers sitting waiting on his desk, still sticky from the supermarket water: winter pansies, notable for being able to thrive even after freezing solid in the winds of winter. He put a lot of thought into them. He puts a lot of thought into everything he does, always.

It’s absolutely a date.

The emails they’d shared had been explicit in their plans; they both operate better with itineraries. They’d decided to dress up, go out, make this something to remember. It feels like it’s important that they do this, step away from their quiet, mousey selves, just for one night. Maeve tells him sometimes she thinks that she’s fading away under data and hypotheses; he tells her that sometimes he feels the same.

Tonight, they’re stepping away from that. Dr. Reid in his suit and tie and converse, waiting outside an upmarket restaurant with his shoulder bag bumping at his hip, flowers resting in the crook of his arm, and an umbrella crowning the sky above him. Rain patters around him. The air is fresh and burns his throat. The night is dark but starred with wavering streaks of city light through the downpour around him.

When her taxi pulls up, he’s there with the umbrella; like a gentleman, he holds it over her. So focused on sheltering her from the rain as she blushes up at him, he almost falls into the gutter. He’s spared a soaking by her hand catching his; the flowers aren’t so lucky. They’re swept away in a moment as they watch them go— _oops_ , is the first thing he says to her, and she begins to laugh. _Next time,_ she reassures him.

She’s beautiful tonight in a dress of midnight blue. There’s nothing mousey about her, not a single thing. He’s smitten before they eat; hopelessly encompassed by the time they’ve let their expensive meals go cold from talking too much. She’s bought him a book too. _The Narrative of John Smith_. He’s not sure if it’s amusing or if it’s fate.

“I don’t want the night to end,” he admits to her as they walk from the restaurant, a handful of awkward silences outweighed by the wonderful feeling of meeting someone on equal intellectual ground more often than not. She knows things he doesn’t; he revels in that. Most people know things he doesn’t—not many of them are as confident in displaying that.

“Me neither,” Maeve says. They’re walking with his hand resting on her elbow. This is probably what undoes him; his grip on his umbrella is loose and the wind has picked up while they dined. “Perhaps we can—oh!”

Away it tumbles, torn from his hand, and, before he can stop her, she’s pelted after it out into the wild night. What else can he do? He gives chase. A woman with her red hair and midnight dress and no care for the rain on her shoulders; a man half-mortified, half-enthralled by the way it changes the lines of her body.

He falls in a puddle. It’s horrifying. His suit is ruined.

To make him feel better about his nicest clothes being drenched, she jumps in one beside him. Shoes kicked off, decorum forgotten, they play in the rain like the children neither of them had ever really been.

They never find the umbrella.

He’s too shy to kiss her goodbye.

 

**February**

It’s her turn to invite him on a date, two weeks after their first. Of course, two weeks turns into three, because they’re both incredibly busy people with little time to spare for—what she hopes—the beginning shades of something more than what they have right now. But she really wants to see him again. He’s on her mind when she’s working, tucked away at the back behind rows of and rows of data points. Before she falls asleep she thinks of him; when she wakes her memories are tauntingly filled with long legs and a shy smile, always just out of focus. She thinks maybe that she dreams of kissing him. She thinks, maybe, that she dreams of undressing him. She wonders what’s hidden under that suit and tie.

When they finally find a moment, they settle on seeing a movie. As it turns out, their taste in books is terrifyingly close. Their taste in movies? He teases her about the way her eyes stray to _The Tigger Movie_ poster and she grumbles about his insistence on loving horror movies. She’s not good at being frightened—and he doesn’t seem to appreciate the rich skill that goes into animation.

They end up settling on watching both.

She calls it a win that he ends up loving Tigger and co. and, as they wait for his pick— _Pitch Black_ —to begin, they sit in the foyer with a box of popcorn and sharing her half-warm soda. He closes his eyes and recites _The House at Pooh Corner_ for her from memory. She’s entranced. He’s blind to how captivating she finds him.

_Pitch Black_ isn’t as fun for her as it is for him; the horrors on the screen transcribe themselves into her very bones and, like the mouse she sometimes worries that she is, she burrows deep down into the plush cinema chair and quivers until he wraps a warm, sweet-scented arm around her. He’s put cologne on his wrist, like a lady with perfume, and she smiles about how much thought he puts into everything he does before she slowly drifts away, snuggled against his side like it’s there she belongs. He’s warm and firm and breathing slowly; she closes her eyes and loses herself in his continued heartbeat. She’s awake to feel him brush his lips against her hair, although she’ll never tell him that.

To make up for her not enjoying the movie, the week after he takes her to a late showing of _Fantasia 2000_ and talks her quietly through all the trivia he’s learned before bringing her here.

She’s worried she might fall in love with him.

 

**March**

March takes a turn for unseasonably cold and a walk through the college with Maeve by his side turns to them huddled in his freezing dorm while he tries to write an essay with fingers that won’t grip his pen. There’s at least eight blankets wrapped around him over-top of his heavy flannel PJs and he adds fingerless gloves to the mix, only flushing a little when Maeve teases him from where she’s curled catlike at the end of the bed, watching a documentary on Ethan’s tiny little TV set.

“It’s cold,” he explains, shivering a little more. “I don’t like the cold. Vegas was never this cold…”

She looks at him then, her almond eyes creased with her smile. “You’re from Vegas?” she asks, and sounds truly interested. He’s never been _interesting_ to anyone before, so it’s a strange feeling to be so now.

He nods assent but is burrowed too deep in his blankets for her to see, only his nose and eyes showing by this point. A shadow moves overhead as she crawls up to him, the bed dipping below her weight. She peers into his cocoon, her mouth turned up into a smile that makes him dizzy, her hands tugging the lecture pad and pen from his and putting them aside.

“Cold little thing,” she teases, and, just like that, he’s flushing hot. She’s pulling the blankets away from him and sliding into the warm furrow left, shedding her coat as she comes until she’s in a light sweater and leggings, pressed tight to him as she closes the blankets back around them and huddles near. “Better?”

_Yes_ , he thinks, but his brain has short circuited, focused entirely on the rough touch of her treated wool sweater on his fingertips, her knees knocking against his, her hands on his chest. “Yes,” he whispers, and it comes out husky and a little more surprised than he’d wanted it to. Her face is inches from his, her eyes locked on his. Brown eyes. Warm and brown. Her face is inches from his… his gaze drifts to her lips. Whatever desire he’s barely daring to think, she somehow hears it.

She dips, once, brushes her lips against his in a warm, soft touch. _Oh,_ he breathes, because that was a first.

“First kisses are always so awkward,” she murmurs, and kisses him again.

The second is better.

It lingers. He can’t breathe; his eyes shut of their own accord and he thrills from his toes to the tip of his hair, somehow shuddering all over while still melding his body closes to hers. She’s smaller than he is—her ankles are wrapped around his calves and he has to dip a little for their mouths to slot together neater. He _ohs_ again, because he can’t verbalize anything else, and then they break apart and just… breathe. Her nose tucked against his, her lips still partially open and brushing his, their hands finding each other and tangling close.

“That was lovely,” he says stupidly, and she laughs and kisses him again, this time tucking herself right up close against him until she’s an electric line of heat from his calves to his hips to his mouth against hers. It’s not like the first two, and she whispers _I’ve been dreaming of this_ before he completely loses track of his brain. Before he can regain it, his hands are on her waist, hitching her close, and their hearts are stuttering together as they explore more of each other than either has let show before. Her sweater has ridged up as they’ve tangled together, exposing flushed, pale skin he catches a glimpse of when he glances down into their blanket cocoon; he touches it with a trailing finger after losing the gloves so he can feel her properly.

“Spence,” she breathes, and he’s never heard his name said like that before. He’s dangerously close to aroused, dangerously so, and tips his hips away just in case. But he’s fine, just fine, right up until she takes his fingers with one of her tiny, delicate hands and traces a line up her stomach with his. Under the sweater she coaxes him, up endless warm and soft skin. His heart is stopped. He licks his lip nervously; she kisses him again and he forgets where his hands are. And she whispers, “I really want you to touch me how you want,” and he whimpers a little before regaining his sense.

“I’ve never,” he admits, flushing red from his nose to his chest, “uh… this. With… _oh_.”

_Oh_ is because she’s let go of his hands and his fingers have finished their journey alone. The silky touch of her bra is a surprise; the way she feels when he slips his hand under it is positively electric. He tries to be gentle, as gentle as possible, and still she gasps a little against his mouth and kisses him like he’s everything she can possibly cling to right now; against his thumb, her nipple is a hard bump getting harder and he realises: she’s aroused.

That’s it for him. He’s hopelessly gone. Control shattered, body alive; his brain is throbbing somewhere between his hips along and he can’t bear her to realise how helpless he is. Frozen with shame and fear and worry, salvation is shocking and loud.

“Why’s it so fucken’ cold in here—oh, hi, Spence. And— _ah_.”

Ethan.

There’s a frantic rustle of blankets as they pull apart and turn to face his startled roommate, Spencer knowing his guilt is written plainly across his face for everyone to see. Ethan is grinning, one eyebrow cocked, his hands slung jauntily into the pockets of his coat; Spencer’s never going to hear the end of this.

“Hi, Eth,” he mumbles, “This is… Maeve. Um.”

“We’re dating,” Maeve supplies, looking surprised to have done so.

Spencer thrills again, almost unconsciously touching his swollen mouth. _Dating_. “Yeah,” he says proudly, because he _should_ be proud; she’s wonderful and alive and _here_. “Maeve, this is my friend, Ethan.”

“Best friend,” Ethan corrects automatically, with a wink that should be lewd but somehow isn’t. “Hey, Spence, can you get me something out of your desk?” He’s grinning, the ass, like he knows exactly _why_ Spencer can’t get up and out from the safety of the blankets right now. Spencer glares. He grins back.

Maeve laughs first.

She stays that night. It’s the first night he falls asleep in her arms, graciously coaxing her into playing big spoon so that he doesn’t make the morning awkward in the tight confines of his twin single.

It’s not the last.

 

**April**

It’s the sappiest, most ridiculous thing she’s ever done and she’s pretty sure it makes him cry, just a little. Not that he lets her see—but she can tell.

They’re at the park. It’s raining gently, an April shower to bring in the new growth, and he’s rambling about trees and squirrels, interchanging the subjects so fast that she’s spends a confused thirty seconds wondering what kind of trees have tails for balance. And, in her bag, there’s a packed lunch, a book they’re reading together—it’s an easy task when he just has to glance at the page and doesn’t seem to mind waiting for her to catch up—and a bottle of non-alcoholic champagne. There’s also something else.

This, she’s aware, is absolutely a date, and she’s going to be brave and make it memorable. Shy little mousey Maeve isn’t going to let this good thing go, not this time. She’s determined.

While he’s wrestling with the bottle, completely distracted by the challenge she’s given him in getting it open without looking like he’s struggling, she pulls the waxed paper boat from her bag and places it gently on the still surface of the lake. A duck quacks at it, swimming away with its tail waggling.

“I think we forgot cups,” Spencer says, handing her the open bottle before spotting her boat. “Oh look—did you make that?” And he’s smiling so widely she can’t help but kiss him, despite the danger of a stray breeze pulling her beloved boat from within reach.

“No,” she replies when they break apart. “You did.”

“Ah.” His eyes so wide as her realises she’d kept it, lost for words. That’s okay. She doesn’t need him to say anything. This is one of the few things she understands completely, this all-encompassing shock about how keenly they feel for each other. But she still waits, as he reaches down and plucks the boat from the water, wiping drips with his sleeve as he examines it and finds what she’s added. A tiny slip of paper.

_Now that I’ve gotten to know you, I would very much like to keep you. Would that be something you would like?_

_Very warm regards, Maeve Donovan._

“Ma’am,” he murmurs, “are you asking me to go steady?”

And she laughs and laughs and laughs at his ridiculous grin as she says, “Yes.”

Of course, he agrees.

 

**May**

“It’ll only hurt a little,” when it comes out of Ethan’s mouth is always shorthand for ‘it’s going to hurt more than expected, and in unexpected ways, but you’re going to do it anyway’. Spencer’s starting to get fluent in Ethanese, and that’s how he also knows that ‘have you ever wondered what it feels like to pierce your ears’ actually means ‘come here near this needle and ice I’m holding and don’t struggle too much’. Having a friend, Spencer is finding, means getting roped into things he’s not sure he’d have tried on his own.

“You’re _sure_ it’s not going to hurt too much, right?” he asks doubtfully, five mugs down of the whiskey Ethan’s mom had bought him and feeling both pleasantly buzzed and a little bit like he should wait to agree to this when sober.

“Sure,” says Ethan, who is only three mugs in, and Spencer suddenly zeroes in on his wavering hands and has a sudden attack of ‘this is a terrible idea’. “Now, hold still.” Before he can tell him not to, Spencer becomes the proud owner of a very crooked pierced ear, which just as promptly begins to bleed.

Everywhere.

And it hurts.

“You can’t just do one!” Ethan hollers after, as Spencer makes a break for it. “And you _really_ can’t just do the gay ear, Spence!”

“Earlobes can’t be gay!” Spencer yells back, and doesn’t stop running.

He’s determined; Maeve can never find out about this.

 

**June**

“You’re an idiot,” Maeve scolds. Ethan has Spencer pinned on the bed as they go at his ear with vodka—Ethan’s solution—and the peroxide she’d brought over when they’d finally admitted why Spencer was avoiding her. “What have we learned from this?”

“Spencer’s a sook,” Ethan responds cheerfully.

“Don’t trust Ethan,” Spencer grumbles.

“I mean, it was a great idea, your body just apparently rejects anything cool—” Ethan begins, but catches sight of her raised eyebrow. “I mean, I’ll just…” He slips out of the room, looking sheepish, leaving Spencer to wiggle and squeak every time she touches the mess that’s become of his poor ear. She’s a little sad that she didn’t get to see it pierced _before_ the infection set in, but she’s not going to tell him that. The lobe is hot and gross, his hair gunky from the mixture of chemicals they’ve been using on it, and he stares up at her looking morose.

“Sorry,” he says, tipping his chin and mouth into the pillow to hide how downturned his lips have turned. “It was dumb. I don’t know why we did it and now we’re taking up your day and—”

To shut him up, she scoots down next to him and kisses him quickly, just to see his shy grin return. “I don’t mind,” she says, and quickly amends, “but don’t do it again.”

“I mean, you’re not really cementing the discipline,” he says. She kisses him again. She’s never been good with behavioural correction, making a mental note to have some kind of discussion about boundaries with Ethan. It’s lucky Spencer’s cute, because sometimes she worries about just how _suggestible_ he is.

 

**July**

Maeve’s dressed, now, but the atmosphere is still painfully tense. Spencer watches her and wonders if he can fix this, now that he’s broken it. It’s just when he’s decided that he can’t that she looks up and notices him still lurking awkwardly in the corner of her living room, hair still damp from his shower and the towel tight around his hips. Outside, the sun is fierce on the neat line of his clothes hanging from her balcony after their impromptu swimming detour, but inside it’s icy with the cooler running full blast and he’s shivering.

“I told you,” she scolds him, getting up and padding over to him on bare feet, one hand trailing shyly around his towelled waist: “Just wear some of my clothes until yours dry. You’re going to freeze.”

“I’m fine,” he manages, wondering if she’d noticed him twitching away from her hands.

She had.

“I’m sorry,” she says. This is despite her having absolutely nothing to be sorry for, and he blinks and stares at her, thrown for a moment on how to respond. “I shouldn’t have pushed, Spence. But we really need to talk about our… boundaries? I guess.” She pauses, inching hesitantly closer with her kind face so worried that he can’t help but fold his arms awkwardly around her and pull her against his bare chest in a tight hug. Despite the shared shower that had caused this entire—disagreement? Misunderstanding? —, her hair still smells of chlorine and a little of sunscreen. “Talk to me, please.”

And she leads him to the touch, settling lightly down next to him with her hands twined through his, her entire attention locked firmly on him. There’s no escaping this, and he stammers before he begins, the panic that had overwhelmed him only an hour ago twinging a reminder in his brain.

“I’m…” he begins, faltering. “I haven’t… had… uh. A girlfriend before. Or…” And he coughs, ducking his head.

“I know.” She sounds amused, and he hopes it’s because he’s telling her something blatantly obvious and not because she’s laughing at his inexperience. “About before…” Before, in the shower when she’d slipped in with him and playing with the soap and loofa had turned into his back against the tiles and hands learning the shape of her as she’d taken him in hand and almost stroked him to completion right there. Before, as he’d dazedly followed her from the bathroom, still naked, still dripping from the shower, still hard. Stepping into her room to find her pulling him towards the bed. Her, naked, and his brain faltering over how beautiful she was even with her hair wet against her body. Before, when they’d fallen to the bed together and almost…: “You’ve never had sex before, have you?”

“No,” he whispers, closing his eyes and feeling his hands turning slippery in hers, to his shame.

“Have you done anything? Is… oh, I don’t feel right asking this, Spence, but… um, is there a…”

“No!” he yelps, wincing at the sharpness to his voice. “No, I mean, there’s nothing wrong with me, with it—ah, I mean, I’ve never been. Hurt or…”

Despite his sweaty hands, she’s still holding on.

“Just never had the opportunity,” he finishes weakly. “Or, quite frankly, the desire. Before… with anyone but you.” Looking back later, he’ll realise that this is probably the suavest he’ll ever be, and he’s in a pink and purple towel barely an hour after having a panic attack over the concept of sex. “I’m frightened by how much I _want_ you.”

Those gorgeous cat-eyes narrow delightedly as she laughs, her grip loosening. “There’s nothing wrong with desire,” she tells him firmly, pausing and asking, “May I?” before sliding onto his towelled lap at his slow nod of assent. “We can go slow. As slow as you need. And you shouldn’t _ever_ be ashamed of desire, Spencer—it’s natural. This is natural.” This, is her body against his as she kisses him desirously, so warm and pliable against him that he’s aroused just by the delight in the act of it. “Would you rather we didn’t do anything more tonight?”

“No,” he manages, his brain half-focused now. “This is good. Slow… I like slow.” And, bravely, he adds, “I dream of this sometimes, of you. Of us.” Bright red with no way to hide it, she looks delighted and shy all at once by his gentle embarrassment.

“Really, huh. That’s funny.” She kisses him again between words. “I dream of us too. I wonder if our dreams are alike…”

His courage returned with her acceptance of him and his inexperience, he swallows hard and—his words far braver than the way he says them—offers to demonstrate, an offer that takes far longer for him to stammer out when every word is awkward on his lips. But, still, she invites him to try, those lovely eyes widening once more as he slips out from under her and settles on his knees between her legs. But he trusts her completely, so he pushes aside his worry and his fears and asks her to tell him how to please her.

And then, he does.

 

**August**

In August, he takes her to see the meteors fall from above.

It’s a silent cornfield in the middle of nowhere and they’re in Ethan’s crappy car that smells of socks and fast food wrappers. Spencer brings blankets and water and they huddle in the backseat with the side door open, their faces tipped up to the deep blue above, eyes tracking every streak of white. When the meteors stop and the sky turns frosty blue instead of midnight black, he holds her close and reads her books from memory, beginning with her favourites and ending with his own.

There’s not much more she can say about it.

It feels significant.

 

**September**

“Ethan,” begins Spencer, and immediately knows it’s a mistake. Ethan, with uncanny knowledge for when Spencer is about to give him the ammunition he needs to ruin his life forever, spins his desk chair around slowly with the happiest grin Spencer has seen on him since Spencer had finally caved and asked him to explain the concept of a ‘gay ear’. “Ah. I have… a question.”

Ethan leans forward, the picture of misguided innocence, and waits.

It’s a long while before Spencer can choke it out, but choke it out he does. Guided mostly by the glorious memory of Maeve undressed and astride him and his own panicked brain, he finally manages to spit out the word, “Sex,” right before his brain takes its leave and he’s left gaping and silent.

Ethan blinks. “I mean, I’m down for it if you are,” he replies with deadpan snark, adding, “I’d be more down for it if Maeve joins in though.”

That, Spencer decides, is hardly worth a response.

“No,” he says, wondering where his words are and if he’s somehow sustained a debilitating brain injury that he was, until now, unaware of. “I mean, um, I mean… ah.”

Around goes the desk chair, Ethan still grinning, knees up to his chest as he uses the hand on his desk to spin himself. Every rotation is accompanied by a sentence, breaking up his damning realisation into awkward pauses: “Oh man, oh _man,_ Spencer, my friend—are you gonna tell me… what I think you’re going to tell me?”

“Not while you’re spinning like an idiot,” Spencer grumbles, and hopes that the brain injury takes him soon. Right now, in fact, so the trauma of his untimely death overwhelms Ethan’s memory that this conversation ever occurred.

“Are you a _virgin_?”

Spencer, once again, deigns not to answer that.

And the chair pauses, Ethan’s eyebrows rising: “Are you about to ask me how to have sex?”

There’s a stain on Spencer’s duvet. It suddenly becomes _very_ interesting.

But the expected teasing doesn’t come. Instead, there’s a thoughtful silence, and then Ethan says, “Listen, Spence… I mean, most of it is natural, you know? I don’t know what I can tell you that isn’t going to be awkward for us both since I’m _sure_ you know the theoretics of it. Just… just don’t listen to porn. And let her lead you. And if you ever bring this topic up again, I’ll never let you live it down.”

Around the chair goes again, turning Ethan’s back to Spencer as he slides his headphones over his ears and turns the music to _loud._ It gives Spencer an out of the conversation he regrets beginning, which he’s thankful for, and he thinks he might have gotten clean away without Ethan utterly ruining the thin shade of confidence building. His dreams are fraught with her, hazy representations of physical sensations he has no grounding to understand, and there’s never been anything he’s desired more than to understand them with her. But the concept of ruining this rare thing they’ve been given is disturbing to him, more disturbing than he can admit.

The next day, he wakes up to Ethan’s gifts to him on his pillow by his head: a box of ‘snug fit’ condoms—code for ‘small’ he realises after some puzzling over it, which he assumes is an amusing thought to Ethan, although when he opens the box there’s a multitude of sizes within—and a tube of ‘glow in the dark’ lube, labelled USE LOTS, that is also inspected until he ascertains that the _tube_ is glow in the dark, not the contents—perhaps, thankfully. Both of these are contained in an empty hot dog box, the instructions on how to fit the hot dog into the bun helpfully circled.

“You’re hilarious,” Spencer tells Ethan when the man wanders back into the dorms looking satisfied with himself. “I can’t tell if you’re trying to help or hinder me.”

“Man, I’m the best wingman you’ll ever have,” Ethan assures him. “Just don’t forget the condoms, otherwise the next box I give you will have _What to Expect When You’re Expecting Little Geniuses_ in it.”

 

**October**

For his birthday, she gives him a horrendous sweater with Scooby Doo on the front of it and cooks him a dinner that he doesn’t seem to know what to do with. Spencer, she realises, has spent far too much of his life being fast-tracked through it. He’s nineteen years old and seven of those years have been spent in a college dorm. There’s something that hurts a little, watching him rush down his roast dinner with only the slightest semblance of care that he doesn’t spill gravy beyond the napkin he’s tucked on his front to spare his Scooby sweater. It being horrendous, he absolutely loves it.

That night she decides to feed him more often, rather much like she’s been feeding the stray cats out the back of her apartment building. They’re all too skinny, cats and boyfriend alike. This is a theory only strengthened when, after dinner is eaten and they’ve washed the dishes together in a scene that’s unsettlingly domestic, he takes his hands and pulls her close and she notices, despite his length, how little of him there is to hold. The arms she wraps around him meet easily at the small of his back, even as she has to stand on tip-toe to kiss his ducked down mouth. A lock of his hair brushes her forehead as he pulls back and away and leads her with him, losing the sweater as she follows him into the bedroom and lets him lift her onto the bed.

For his birthday, he gives her so much more.

He’s half soft inside her, his breath coming fast and his eyes closed. There’s a strain about his mouth that she kisses away, one hand cupped to his cheek; they’re naked and sweaty and woven together in a tangle of limbs and the thump thump thump of shared heartbeats.

“You’re doing so good,” she tells him, feeling him gasp, feeling him stiffen once more. “So good.”

Those wide eyes open and she’s unsettled by how much boy there is in them right now, despite the age she usually sees in them. For the first time—she’d almost half doubted the date of birth he’d given her, the years in his eyes deceptive—she believes in his youth. “Tell me what to do,” he asks of her, his grip clammy and his heartbeat worried. He moves a little. Slides out. That unsteady heart skips.

But she stalls his panic. “Move with me,” she instructs, and pulls him tight against her. Little room to move but so much more intimacy. For the first time since he’d laid down beside her and whispered, _Tonight,_ she feels calm. This; this is what she wants to give him. “Move with me,” she whispers again, but she doesn’t need to. He’s worked it out.

The worry fades, from his eyes and his heart, and he chants her name like a promise of what’s to come.

 

**November**

Thanksgiving dinner at Bennington has never appealed, either for him or for his mother, so he gets permission to take her out for the day and packs a picnic spread to eat at the park. They’re bundled up despite the, now that he’s lived in DC, relatively comfortable weather, and he’s wearing the scarf and cartoon sweater that Maeve gave him. His mom is quiet, eyes locked on her turkey—store-cooked—and gravy—from a packet—roll as she nibbles at it. It’s not an uncomfortable quiet. There’s a pile of books next to each of them that they’re reading through at their leisure in between watching the ducks scoot about on the pond or simply enjoying the peace of this day.

“You’ve never been a cook, have you?” his mom asks once, smiling as she digs through the basket and picks off price-tags from various food items with a wink. But she pauses on one item, going, “Oh?” and lifting it up for inspection. It’s a little glass jar of cranberry sauce and the home-made label on it is in Maeve’s handwriting. “Who is this?”

He thinks, for a second, about hoarding her all to himself, but changes his mind. A pleasure shared is a pleasure doubled. “Mom,” he begins, unable to hide the building excitement/fear/anticipation: “I’m… Maeve made it. The, um, sauce, she made the sauce…”

“And Maeve is?”

And he takes a breath and leaps into cementing what they are to each other: “My… girlfriend. I’m, um… I love her.”

“Well then,” Diana says after a surprised moment, her face shifting into a smile that’s still shocked but absolutely real: “Looks like we truly do have something to be thankful for today, my boy has found _love_. Is she kind? Does she read? Tell me about her.”

So, he does.

 

**December**

“Mrrrrrap,” says Maeve’s laundry hamper.

Spencer, having just dropped in to say goodbye before she flies to DC for the Christmas break, stares at the hamper and then, moments later, at the big, square head shoving its way out of it. “That’s a cat,” he says redundantly.

“You really are a genius, aren’t you?” Maeve teases. “But, shh, not too loud. This place is strict no pets and my neighbour walks around with her ears to the wall, I swear.”

“Mrrrrrrr,” rumbles the astoundingly ugly cat, oozing out and down the side of the laundry hamper to land on the ground in a fluffy puddle of wildly ginger fur. The face that emerges from the fur is flat and snub-nosed, two snaggle teeth showing clearly on its dingy once-white muzzle and not a single whisker unbent. Spencer counts one intact ear and something that might have been another ear, a long time ago, and then peers to look for a tail.

“It’s missing bits,” he says, concerned. “Are you sure it’s… a cat?”

“Yes, Spencer, I’m sure Maurice is a cat,” she says patiently, scooping up the ugly puddle of ginger which immediately begins growling at her, even as she strokes it lovingly. “Isn’t he beautiful?”

That feels like a trap.

Spencer, wisely, decides not to answer that, as Maeve sweeps away with ‘Maurice’ and plonks him on the kitchen counter, right next to a pile of Christmas wrappings. The cat promptly rolls onto the ribbons, emerging from the nest of festivity with a red streamer vanishing into his mouth at a frightening pace and a bow stuck to where the missing ear should be.

“Are you… keeping it?” he asks warily, as the cat spots him looking and unsheathes its claws.

“Of course,” she replies, looking startled that he’d even ask such a thing. “But I need you to feed him while I’m away. I can’t put him _back_ —he’s a stray, Spencer, and he was _starving_.”

The cat is, to put it politely, fat. Spencer doubts it was starving. He, however, does _not_ doubt that it was a stray, unsure that anyone would want the yellow-eyed demon living in their home.

“Wait, what?” he asks, clicking onto what she just said.

“You’ll feed him for me, right?” Maeve says, uneasily, pausing with one hand resting on the ginger fluff. “Oh, I shouldn’t have assumed, I just thought that since you’re not going home for the—”

“It’s fine,” Spencer replies fast, going to pet the ‘cat’ to show how eager he is to help. Maurice, with cunning accuracy, promptly sinks his claws into the crotch of his trousers and yowls furiously.

All in all, it’s not his best Christmas. He spends it alone with a bottle of wine and the demon cat, missing Maeve and missing Ethan and hoping that next year will be better.


	3. 2001

**January**

He’s determined to spoil her for her twenty-third birthday, despite his plans going somewhat awry. But he’s lucky—unlike two years ago, this year he isn’t alone. Because of this, by the time she arrives home from work, everything is ready. There’s dinner on the table lit solely by the flickering candlelight, his gift is wrapped neatly beside her plate, and Maurice is brushed with a bow tied to his collar.

“Did you cook this?” Maeve asks, tasting the white sauce and looking startled. He’s hovering overhead, looking as innocent as he knows how to look, which is probably why she’s so suspicious in return.

“Yes,” he lies, dish towel on shoulder and floury hands for effect.

She frowns. “Did you brush Maury?”

“Mrrww,” says Maurice accusingly.

“Of course, Maurice loves me.” To illustrate this, Spencer tries to pet the cat and gets bitten in return.

“Hmm.” The sound is thoughtful enough that Spencer is pretty sure he’s busted. “Spence?”

“Yes, dear?” Oops. He’s oversold it. Her eyebrows pop up, a smile teasing, and he can’t help but grin guiltily. She takes two steps, just two steps, towards the trash can. “Ah. Don’t open… that.” She does. The previous meal is in there, quietly languishing in all its cremated glory. She doesn’t laugh but it’s a very close thing, and he loves her for the restraint she’s trying to show right now. “Who’d have thought Ethan could cook?” Spencer says glumly, knowing that what had probably given it away was the neatly brushed and bowed cat. The only human that that animal loves, other than Maeve, is Ethan. But, in the end, the meal is delicious, she loves her gift, and the night is a success—and all it had cost him was his pride.

**February**

She gets the notice of eviction at the beginning of February, and it barely gives her time to think. It looms over her head like the promise of future stress to come as she frantically browses real estate listings to find somewhere nearby that will take her and her cat without bankrupting her in the process. It seems an impossible task—student housing is no pets and everywhere else is twice as expensive to catch those that are desperate. And the deadline ticks closer until she finds herself perched on Spencer’s shitty dorm bed with her knees to her chest and desperately trying not to cry while he hovers helplessly overhead.

“I’m going to have to move into the graduate dorms,” she says, pressing her eyes into her knees as they begin to burn. Ethan is sitting at his desk, listening quietly, and she wishes he wasn’t there so that she could cry openly. There’s a gentle touch to her shoulder, and she squints up to find Spencer exchanging a panicked look with Ethan; this is something she’s discovering about him, that he’s terrible with tears. But her guilt over that fades as realisation strikes: “They’ll make me get rid of Maurice!” And she’s gone, chest hurting from the shuddering sobs working their way out of her. It’s mortifying. She’s not a pretty crier and she hates seeming so weak and childish in front of him, but Maurice is her cat and she _loves_ him. Who else will look after him like she does?

“We could hide him here?” Ethan suggests, but she shakes her head violently. No, _no_. Then they’d get in trouble and they’d all be out on the street. “There must be something we can do—that old bitch can’t just kick you out.”

“She can, she _can,_ I violated the lease by having him.” It’s her fault and Maurice is going to suffer for it, as she pictures him pushing his nose up against the bars of a cage in some terrible shelter, the hours ticking down before they carry him away to be put down. Waiting for her and her never arriving and—

“Oh no, don’t cry louder,” Spencer says helplessly. “Do you want a hug? Um. Should I…”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, Spence.” There’s a rustle of movement and someone is hugging her, far too broad and warm to be Spencer. Despite this, it’s comforting, and Ethan doesn’t let go. She lets herself be miserable, just for now, making his sweater all wet instead of getting snot on Spencer. “It’s alright. We’ll think of something. We’re two geniuses and me, that’s way too much brainpower not to think of a solution. Hey, where are you going?”

Maeve peers out of her Ethan-cocoon to see Spencer making a break for it out the door. “Going to check something,” he calls back, and then he’s gone.

“Did I scare him away?” she asks, adding this worry onto her others.

“I have absolutely no idea,” Ethan admits.

When Spencer returns, he refuses to talk about where he’s been, and Maeve quietly resides herself to homelessness or an exhaustingly long commute. If he’d found a solution, he’d have told them. Unless there’s a miracle, life is about to get a whole lot harder.

**March**

The blindfold is distracting. Spencer hadn’t really thought it through, just what blindfolding Maeve would do to his limbic system, but he can’t allow himself to become side-tracked just yet. Even as he guides her up the stairs with their hands entwined, and he keeps looking back to find her expression sweetly curious, intimately trusting and with loose little threads of red hair tumbling from her messy bun over the black of the blindfold. If this goes well, he decides, they’re going to have some fun with that blindfold in the future.

“May I have a hint?” she asks, and his heart does a strange, frantic dance about in the recesses of his chest. This has to go well. It _has_ to. He’s in too deep to scare her away now. But, despite her smile, there are lines of worry around the mouth he loves and he knows her eyes are dull from stress. It’s impossible for him to see this and not want to fix it, even just alleviate it slightly, in any possible way.

“You don’t need one,” he says, “we’re here.”

And he unlocks the door with a trembling hand and leads her inside. Their voices echo. It smells a little of dust, closed-in air, and the carpet cleaner management have used on it. Even their footsteps are stupidly loud, and he makes a mental note to buy a rug. He steps closer to her, panicking a little. Pulls her close. She’s so responsive to his hands, his touch, she folds in neatly against his chest and tips her mouth up expecting a kiss. And he always, always, exceeds expectations, so he does. Soft and slow and wonderful, he kisses her in the empty apartment before slowly untying the blindfolding and drawing it away. She takes in the room, eyes wide. It’s unfurnished but that’s okay. He’s not comfortable with sharing upholstery with strangers to begin with. And besides, this way… well, they can furnish how they want to.

Together.

“Where are we?” she asks, staring at the wall that’s entirely made up of inbuilt bookshelves. That had sold him on signing the lease to this place—that and the beautiful view of the sky from the windows in their bedroom. His bedroom. Her bedroom. There are too many possible outcomes of this gamble, and only one he truly desires. “Is this yours?”

“Well, ours,” he says, bravely and with terror shaking him to the bone. “I mean… ours. If you want it to be. Or yours, if you’d rather. I can stay at the dorm. But Maurice is allowed—”

And he has to stop because she’s cried out and he’s worried, for a heartbeat, until she crashes into his arms and drags him down to her level, kissing him frantically with tears in her eyes. For once, she’s the undone one, rambling words he doesn’t quite catch, until he does. Into his mouth as she kisses him, she’s saying, “I love you, I love you, I love you.”

He supposes that’s a yes and holds her as she cries in the empty apartment that’s soon to be their home.

**April**

It’s the weirdest thrill to be in their own apartment; all this space purely for them, like someone has reached down and tucked a pocket of the world away just for them to exist within. Maeve is overwhelmed by it. This is her bathroom that she’ll share with him; this is their kitchen they’ll cook within together; this the bedroom where they’ll wake beside each other _every_ morning; this is the stage where their lives are beginning.

It’s a wild, mad, reckless feeling and she doesn’t feel at all like herself when she corners Spencer in the living room by the small pile of their belongings trapped in moving boxes. Books, she assumes, are in the one his butt hits as she tips him back to reach his mouth, judging from the firm _thunk_ of man on box. He’s receptive today, immediately abandoning mentally planning his bookshelves—well, bookshelf, singular despite how large it is, but she shivers to imagine how many shelves they’ll one day gloriously have—and lifting her onto his lap with his wide hands wrapped around her ass and her legs straddling him. His hands are eager and mobile, drawing her against him again and again as their mouths seek each other; she has to cling to his shoulders to stop from falling from their awkward box-perch and their height difference is killing her, but it’s absolutely worth it because he’s beginning to gasp into her mouth with a tell-tale weight pressing into her leg. They break apart, Spencer’s face all flushed and hers flushed too, judging from the hot burn of blood in her cheeks, and she can’t help but blurt out, “Thank you for this.” This is the apartment. This is their lives together.

He just shakes his head. “Don’t thank me, ever,” he murmurs, kissing her again, once, twice, uncountable times. “Not for things like this, for things that are _integral_.”

She feels him smile against her mouth, dipping to nip at her collarbone. “Our home is integral?” she asks, just to be sure.

“Absolutely.”

He’s cocked hard and ready when she coaxes him to slide his pants from those lovely thin hips and sinks down. Her sundress up, one of his hands helping hold it out the way as he laps his way from breast to breast, her panties kicked aside. The condoms are somewhere, lost in transit, but they’re too far to stop now. It’s rough and shocking and he makes a noise like he’s hurting as he pushes home as hard as he can go; it’s also everything she’s wanted. To see him undone. To hold him undone. She holds him with one arm as he gasps; she continues holding him as he sags into her grasp; she’s still holding him as she brings herself over the edge with one sticky thumb between her legs and her mouth on his hair.

“I love you,” she tells him after.

“I love you too,” he replies, rapid-fire.

**May**

It’s significantly insignificant. They’re in the laundry room of _their_ apartment building—it still hasn’t gotten old, that ‘their’ tapped onto the front of the nondescript building—doing their washing. Spencer is fascinated by the heartbeat of the room around him and within him, the _whump whump whump whump_ of the twelve machines in their carefully straight lines spinning their contents. The smell of soap and the sound of water sloshing and the girl with his arms around her. Her heartbeat is audible too; not to his ears, but to some kind of sense he can’t explain, some deep-seated feeling within his very self. Pressed to his chest with her hair brushing his chin, they’re dancing to a certain beat despite the only music the rhythm of the room around them.

It’s dumb and it’s small and it’s not important at all, but he loves this dance and he loves that their washing is in the same machine and he loves this woman. When he looks down and finds her looking back at him, he sees this moment and their past moments, and he sees at the moments they still have yet to come.

**June**

Everyone makes it to lunch this time. Josh brings his baby, Carly has endless exciting stories to tell about the nightlife in New Orleans, Ann is smiling again. And Maeve doesn’t feel unimportant or small at all, not anymore. There’s a book in her bag, unread, and her napkin is whole. She’s talking about work and it doesn’t feel bland or mousey. They’re interested, listening with rapt attention, and she wonders if she’s always been this alive. Maeve Donovan, soon to be _doctor_ , and there’s more to her life than her work or her boyfriend, but both of them have helped create this moment. Both of them are a part of her. The conversation shifts, moving on. Teething and insurance troubles and new medications; they’re adults now, she realises. Definitely adults. For once, she doesn’t mind.

There’s plenty of life left to be lived, and she intends to live it completely.

**July**

Ethan, once again, manages to get his own way. A quiet night in to celebrate Ethan’s twenty-first ends with Spencer following his drunk friend from jazz club to bar as they revel the night away. He barely manages to drag Ethan away from a tattoo parlour, guessing that whatever wild imaginings ticking on in his crazy friend’s head right now might not be as welcome in the morning, and he completely failings in stopping him from trying to prove that he’s still young enough to try and swing all the way around the top bar on a swing-set they find at an abandoned playground. Spencer finds some grass in the darkened park to crash on, flopping back and watching the starless sky as the repetitive creaking and clinking of the swing-set continues on, occasionally broken by Ethan swearing. He’s sober, a little sick from too much fruit juice, and giddy with the night. It’s a good night, a wonderful night.

A significant night.

“We should go home,” Spencer says after a yawn that cracks his jaw with the force of it. “There’s candy in the pantry and I think Maeve has some cider—you can sober up to _Samurai Pizza Cats_.” It’s a show he has no real opinion either way on, but Ethan is a fan.

“The night is still young!” Ethan calls back, falling from the swing with an _oomph._ Spencer peers up and checks that he’s still breathing, before flopping back to the grass and ignoring the pained groans. With the sheer amount of alcohol Ethan has inhaled tonight, he’s sure that the man isn’t _actually_ feeling any pain. Maybe in the morning—Spencer grins as he plans to have Maeve deal with that. She’s a much better nurse.

“The night is young, and I’m younger,” Spencer points out, watching a beetle fly overhead, visible by the moon directly above that. “And unless you want to risk getting caught in licensed premises with a twenty-year-old, or tie me up on the curb like a dog outside a supermarket, we’re going home.”

“All I want for my birthday is my best friend to grow up,” Ethan grumbles, stumbling upright and shedding bark-chips. Despite this complaining, he’s laughing and still holds his hand out to help Spencer up too. “Come on then, mini, let’s go smash down your candy collection.”

“I love you too,” Spencer tells him sweetly, ignoring his eyeroll and following behind at a sedate pace. Ethan has a fascination with street signs that Spencer doesn’t have the energy to keep up with, letting him bound away and return at his own pace, enjoying the night and the warm air and the almost-quiet city. Never really silent, but Vegas had never been quiet either and Spencer relishes all the sounds of living. He’s thinking this when they come up behind him, and he’s on the ground before he knows what’s happening, the knife pinching his skin even as a hand grinds his face into the cement.

“Wallet and anything else you’re holding,” they tell him, he thinks. He can’t be sure. He’s utterly and completely terrified and focused on nothing else but holding his breath so that the knife doesn’t nip him and carve its way into the skin he’s only just realised is horrendously vulnerable.

“Yes, okay,” he distantly hears himself whine in a voice like a whimper, “please don’t hurt me.”

Begging. He’s begging. He doesn’t care. There’s a knee in his back and he tastes blood; he’ll do anything to go home tonight.

He thinks of Maeve and wishes he’d given her more than he has.

“Hey!” he hears, and his heart falters and stops as there’s a scuffle nearby. _Ethan._ “Get off him— _uh_.”

It’s not a good sound. It’s the sound of wind being knocked out of someone, and it’s followed by a meaty, crumpling noise. There’s a buzzing in Spencer’s ears that’s drowning out everything else. He swallows dirt and blood. His bladder pinches. There’s a danger of pissing himself as fear turns everything inside him to water. _Don’t move,_ he tells himself, or maybe they whisper to him. _Don’t call the cops or we’ll kill you._

When he opens his eyes, they’re long gone and he’s still pressing himself to the ground. Struggling upright, head spinning and mouth tangy and breath choking, he spits and spits and then realises he’s alone on the silent street. Silence in the city. He stares at his spit shining dark on the cement, then he lifts his head. His wallet is gone. His wallet is gone, taken, and he stares at Ethan on the ground.

He’s not moving.

Spencer stands. Takes a shaky step. And another. Shock is numbing him. Fear is driving him. Ethan’s not moving. One more step. And just one last one: Ethan’s at a stupid angle and his head is all wrong, tipped from the curb and back into the gutter, baring his throat to the world. There’s blood in the gutter and Spencer watches it puddle.

“Ethan?” he asks, and Ethan doesn’t move. It takes too long for him to react. Far too long.

July ends on Ethan’s birthday, with Spencer crouched in the gutter with his shirt pushed to the knife wound in his friend’s chest, holding in that steadily faltering heartbeat.

July ends.

**August**

She’s never hated anyone but she hates the men—or boys, she doesn’t know their ages, but hates to think that children could do this—who have hurt the people she cares about so so much. Ethan’s hurt, hurt plenty, but so is Spencer. There’s an anger that simmers in her ignited by the fear the night she’d gotten _that_ call had created— _Maeve? It’s Spencer. We’re at the hospital, you need to come._ It’s been kept burning by seeing Ethan so pale and small in the hospital bed as they worked to replace the blood he’d lost on some nameless street, or the purple shadows bruising the skin around Spencer’s eyes as he’d refused to sleep. It ignites again when they bring Ethan home to their apartment—he can’t bend, can’t reach, and he’s on pain medication that makes him both angry and disconnected—and he fights them because he’s furious at being ‘coddled’. And once more it simmers when Spencer cries himself to sleep that night because their friend is hurt and they can’t help him.

But they’re going to be okay.

They don’t catch the men who did it, and Maeve is glad that all they’d lost that night were some wallets and a few odds and ends. She’s glad her boys came home.

It’s on this day as she’s helping Ethan change the bandages around his chest—Spencer can’t, his breathing turns rapid and panic creeps into his eyes when he tries and she worries about trauma—that she stops him before he adds the padding atop the neat line of stitches holding together the jagged wound. It hadn’t cut neatly, the knife that could have killed him. It had bitten and tore the whole way, leaving a gouge in his ribcage that’s still nicer than the alternative, and she traces the wound with the gentlest of touches, trying to avoid where the skin is a mottled purple-green from the impact bruising.

“Gonna scar like a bitch,” Ethan says glumly, staring at her hands. “Shit. I could have fucking _stopped_ them and I… didn’t. I’m sorry.”

“What for?” she asks honestly. He’s here, isn’t he? Spencer might be scared to walk out onto the shaded street alone and jolts awake at every sound, and Ethan might be scarred and bruised and in constant pain, but they’re _alive_. They might not have been, but they are.

“He could have been killed,” he says, and he’s not looking at anything now. “Spence… they had him on the ground and I turned around and thought they’d killed him. Shit, Maeve, he could have been killed because I was drunk and not close and—”

She hurts because he thinks his worth on that night is solely tied up in keeping her boyfriend alive, as though there’s no inherent value in his own survival. For the first time, she realises that Ethan’s not as bold and untouched by life as he seems.

“Don’t be stupid,” she tells him quietly but firmly, the same thing she’ll tell Spencer later. “They hurt you, you did _nothing_ to deserve it. And they can’t do shit to you now—this night isn’t going to change you, or how much we love you, Spencer and me.”

He smiles a little, and it’s anything but insignificant.

**September**

September marks the month Ethan gets his stitches out and it’s notable for how strange the occasion is. Ethan, with the force of the personality that’s finally beginning to emerge from the misery that night cast over them, drags Spencer with him and Spencer has zero idea why. That lasts right up until Ethan makes Spencer not only sit in the waiting room, but follow him _into_ the day clinic. The doctor gets out the tools he needs, and Ethan’s hand snaps around Spencer’s wrist with biting force, his hands clammy despite the air being cool and his shirt being off. Spencer looks at him curiously, seeing the glassy glint to his eyes and the sweaty sheen to his skin, and realises.

“Are you scared of the doctors?” he asks Ethan, seeing Ethan wince.

“Shut up,” he mutters. “Hospitals freak me out.” And that’s all he’ll say on the matter, other than to demand an ice cream on the way home for ‘being brave’. They’re sitting together on the park bench by the ice cream parlour, picking at their frozen treats and trying to pretend that they’re not both trying to look everywhere at once, when Ethan speaks.

“I know you feel like shit about that night, about not helping me,” he says, “but you shouldn’t. What you did, that was smart. If I’d done the same, I’d have gotten out of there without them popping a hole in me.”

“I let them hurt you,” Spencer says. His ice cream is melting. He licks it from his fingers and winces at the stickiness.

“You did what you had to to survive. And, since then? Spence, you’ve propped me up when all I’ve wanted to do is fall. You’ve helped me plenty. That’s a kind of bravery too.”

There’s an ant on the ground by Spencer’s shoe, walking in circles around a drip of mint macadamia. Spencer watches it, and says nothing.

“You watch,” Ethan continues. “One day, you’ll have the knowledge and the resources to stop something like that happening again and you’ll see—no one will get hurt around you then. I can promise you that, man.”

Spencer wishes it was that easy.

**October**

In October, Spencer’s only wish for his birthday is one that Maeve gives gladly. She flies to Vegas, to meet Diana Reid.

Diana isn’t what she’d pictured when she’d thought of Spencer’s mom. For some reason, she’d always pictured someone larger than life, filled with all the wild glee that Spencer embodies. The same childish whimsy, the same sharp quick-fire mind. The same sweet smile tempering that terrifying intelligence. But Diana is faded, like paper left too long in the sun. She sits in her sunchair in the sanitorium she lives in and barely says a word, just quietly watches Spencer speak to her. It’s an awkward, miserable meeting. There’s a tense misery to both Diana and Spencer’s mouths that speaks of their relation to each other, as does the shape of their saddened eyes. Diana’s trying, Maeve can tell—but there’s a limit to her ability to feign normality and it hurts to think that the woman is trying this hard for Maeve’s benefit alone. They come back twice more, and it’s on the final trip that Maeve realises she was wrong. The illness that attacks the brain that Spencer idolises might have lessened Diana, but it hasn’t destroyed her. Not yet.

On the third and final trip, Diana is in the garden. There’s a chess set sitting in front of her; she’s been waiting for them to arrive. Leaves drift around them, fall touching this place despite summer refusing to fade from this desert-soaked city. “Maeve isn’t much of a chess player,” Spencer says, taking the place across from his mother.

“That’s fine, neither am I,” Diana replies, and smiles at Maeve. It’s the Spencer smile except, as Maeve realises then, perhaps it was Diana’s first. The same sweet hint of more, the same flicker of intelligence in those eyes; Diana was a person before Spencer existed and she’s only faded, not gone. “Raising you, Spencer, was like playing chess with no one telling me the rules. I’m sure your beautiful friend understands.”

“He can be difficult,” Maeve murmurs, earning herself a laugh from Diana and a pout from her son. “But I love him.”

Diana looks at her, really, truly looks at her. It’s a look that takes her apart and studies every part of her. Maeve remembers: this woman used to read Spencer fairy tales, the true kind. The ones with blood and fear and not always a happy ending—but with magic and princesses and dragons too.

“Yes, you really do, don’t you?” Diana says, her voice oddly satisfied, and proceeds to lose at chess again and again and again, until Maeve is sure she’s only still playing to make Spencer smile.

**November**

Thanksgiving brings him to the Donovan’s. They’re interesting people, but he feels a little lost at their dinner table. They seem to resent him his seat beside her and they certainly resent the place he takes in the bed beside her over that time—he spends the entire week as far from her as he can get without making it obvious, unable to even put his arm around her without feeling strange and out of place. By the end of it, he’s so wound up that he can’t even think straight, going for a drive on his own to a bottle shop nearby and sitting in the car with a small travel bottle of scotch to stop himself from embarrassing himself that night at dinner.

She finds him there and slides into the passenger seat, sitting with her knees to her chest and her chin resting upon them. “I’m sorry,” she says finally. He drinks. “They don’t hate you, I promise, they’re just… like this. Disconnected. I don’t think they know what to do with you.”

“That’s okay,” he lies. “I don’t really know what to do with myself most of the time either…”

**December**

In December, she’s having a bad day when she snaps at Spencer about anything that’s annoying her—it’s not him, not really, but he’s dead in her firing line when the stress of her doctoral studies finally piles up on her. And what she snaps about isn’t really what’s heavy on her mind, more like annoying on the outskirts of it, but it’s what she zeroes in on nonetheless. Him leaving socks all over the house like a snake leaves its skin, the way they let dishes pile up so she can’t even reach the sink, his insomniac tendencies that leave her alone in bed more often than not, and the one that really hurts him and that she regrets the most after saying it, because Ethan is in earshot: “Why is he still here and when do we get our home back?”

By the next day, the spare room that’s the size of a large closet and set solely aside for Ethan’s use is empty and he’s left a wad of cash on the countertop that’s too much for the time he’d spent there and works solely to drive a stake of guilt into her heart. It’s pinned with a note that says _Thanks for having me, you guys are the cat’s knees and the bee’s pyjamas_ along with a smiley face that’s a little too manic for comfort.

She finds Spencer sitting in the closet-room, looking up at the creepy terracotta goblin face Ethan had hung on the wall. “I hate that he left George behind,” Spencer says.

“I hate that you guys named it,” she replies.

And Spencer looks at her, smiles wickedly, and—her sweet, innocent boyfriend who she’s clearly corrupted—suggests slyly, “You know, we could really reclaim this place now.”

The sex is a little weird, since the pillow kind of still smells like Ethan’s cologne despite him changing the sheets and because George is watching them with his terracotta smile fixed firmly in place, but mostly because Spencer stops halfway and sighs dramatically, watching Maurice sniff under the bed with a woeful expression on his face. Maeve stops too, watches them both, and gives in. The apartment is too empty without Ethan. “I miss him as well,” she says. “You think he’ll come back?”

He’s back by Christmas, this time for good.


	4. 2004

**January**

A man asks to speak to Spencer at his and Ethan’s PhD graduation, leading him away for almost an hour. When he finally returns, the place is emptying as people filter away to celebrate with their loved ones, leaving Maeve, Ethan, and Diana to wait for him to return.

When he does, he says very little, just keeps grinning helplessly as they go to dinner and share a celebratory wine, Diana telling him over and over how endlessly proud of him she is and always will be. By the time they get home, they’re a little tipsy and Diana—sober, since she can’t drink on her medication—kisses his cheek and declares him the best of all the Reids before vanishing to bed, purple shadows under her eyes betraying her exhaustion despite the energy still buzzing around the others.

And there is energy. Spencer can’t seem to sit still after his mother retires to bed, finding another bottle of wine and splitting it with them as they talk about the present and the future and everything they’re going to do. It’s the next stage of his life which means it’s the next part of hers too, and they get drunk and talk about marriage and children and white picket fences and travelling the world and starting a collection of silly hats. With all the doors between them and Diana closed, he puts on music from his childhood on softly and dances with her without a drop of rhythm between them, Ethan flopped on the couch trying to give them tips. They declare they’ll name their children after childhood authors and paper their rooms with the pages of books or, failing that, adopt a dozen parrots and teach them all to recite passages of _The Silmarillion_. Ethan declares that he’ll one day own his own jazz club and that them and their hoard of strange children won’t be allowed, unless any of them take after him in which case he’ll teach them piano.

It's a weird, happy, frantic night, one they’ll never forget.

And then Spencer says, “I was offered a job today,” and they’re drunk and stupid, one-upping each other as they try to guess what job it could be—brain surgeon, rocket scientist, zoology professor, child-care worker—until he sits down and says quietly, “FBI agent.”

They go quiet too. Maeve doesn’t know what Ethan is thinking, but she knows what’s running through her mind. Bullets and bad guys and secrets and—

Virginia. The FBI Academy is in Quantico.

It’s so terribly far away.

“Are you going to take it?” she asks, and thrills a little with a mix of excitement/worry when he nods slowly and says, “I think I might.” Her skinny boy, her barely-a-man, an FBI agent? With a gun and a badge and saving lives… she’s never been more uncertain.

“FBI agent, huh?” Ethan muses, picking up the bottle and blowing across the top, failing to make a sound. Fidgeting to hide him thinking, they know how he works by now. “Well, that’s a something.” She aches, for a moment, to look at him sitting with them because he doesn’t have his own family to celebrate this with.

“Come with me,” Spencer says suddenly, and for a moment she thinks he’s asking her. But it’s Ethan he’s looking at. “We’ve talked about it before, the BAU… you said it’d be cool, that you could see yourself working there!”

This is news to her, but Ethan nods slowly. “It would be something,” he repeats, and Spencer grins so wide she’s sure he’s about to start dancing again.

When they do drunkenly stagger to bed, Spencer whispers to her, “Can you imagine? _Me,_ in the FBI?” and she can, she absolutely can. Undressing him slowly; he’s already excited and pressing against her, finding her mouth with a relentless, drunken passion, so alive and new in this moment of moving forward. They have sex on the floor so no one hears the bed and fall asleep there in a jumble of limbs and love, with Maeve’s last thought being a soft worry about being alone.

**February**

Maeve is supportive but worried, and that’s not a combination he knows what to do with. None of this is anything that he knows how to handle: not the prospect of leaving her, not the whole new world looming close, not the threat of a fast decision to be made, and especially not this new and wild excitement coursing through him. He’s not just excited, he’s obsessed, consuming every bit of media on the BAU and Jason Gideon and psychological profiling that he can get his hands on, with every piece just fanning the flames of his obsession.

He doesn’t just want to join the BAU, he _needs_ to. This is something he’s never had before: a goal beyond the intellectual. There’s academical pursuits available to him within the work with the BAU, of course, case studies and independent research and conferencing, but, beyond that, there’s something more real. The theories and files in his research, brought to life.

He thinks that if he says no to this, he’ll never quite find his way so clearly again.

He flies to Quantico for a day and Gideon takes him through the Academy there, showing him everything it has to offer him as a trainee. The man is strange, withdrawn and passionate all at once, and his gaze, when it lands on Spencer, is painfully discerning. Spencer gets the feeling that’s he seeing more than Spencer’s too-long hair and too-thick glasses, past the sweater-vests and complete lack of confidence. Through all that to some potential inside him that’s too hidden for even Spencer himself to discern.

When he returns home, he can’t help it, all he can do it talk on and on about everything he’s seen, all the opportunities available. Ethan is interested but reticent—but Spencer is sure he wants this too, isn’t this exactly what they’d used to talk about late nights back at their dorm? —and Maeve listens intently and says very little, asking only leading questions to spin him off into another excitable tangent. Gideon says, Gideon did, and David Rossi.... he can hear himself hyper-focusing but knowing he’s doing it and stopping himself are two different things, although they seem to understand.

It’s late at night that he falters. One week before he has to give an answer. He’s sitting silently on the couch, watching Maurice trying to eat a moth. Ethan is reading a book on the armchair across; Maeve is working on her dissertation on the floor in front of him, occasionally twitching her pen to distract Maurice from his prey.

“I don’t know what to say to Gideon,” he admits finally, curling his knees close.

“Bullshit you don’t,” Ethan replies immediately, eyes snapping up. “Yes, you idiot.”

“Yes,” Maeve repeats quietly, focusing on her paper so he can’t see her eyes. “You need this, Spence. If you say no for my sake, you’ll always regret it.”

He’s silent. It hurts, but they’re right.

God, it hurts.

“I’ll have to leave…” He trails off. They all know this, it’s the elephant in the room. “Maeve?”

She looks up and smiles, despite her over-bright eyes. “You know,” she says, “once I finish up here, I’ve always wanted to work in DC.”

And Ethan murmurs, “I’ll be right there with you, man.”

He says yes the very next day, and Gideon doesn’t seem at all surprised.

**March**

The socks in the suitcase are paired and sorted by colour, Spencer’s sock index continuing even in transit, and she’s not sure if knowing this makes her want to laugh or cry. Alone in the bedroom folding one of his neatly ironed shirts to join the rest, she feels like she’s packing him up and tucking him away ready to return to her lonely, miserable, insignificant life. Against the window, the waxed-paper boat hangs limply, unstirred by any breeze. No boat on the ocean was ever so still and, looking at it, that’s when she does cry.

Spencer finds her there and says nothing as he sits down beside her on the bed they’ve shared and wraps his arms around her. “It’s not that long,” he says firmly, and she hugs him tight and burrows her face into his shoulder, determined to remember the softness of his arms and the hint of fat around his stomach before the FBI take him and turn all those forgiving edges hard. He’s going to see things she can’t fathom, learn things unimaginable to her, understand cruelties she refuses to even think about; it’ll be a miracle if he retains the ageless innocence she loves in his eyes.

She doesn’t want him to grow up. This apartment, this home, this is their Neverland—and he’s leaving it for war-torn London. She can’t protect him there.

“It’s a year, maybe more,” she mumbles into that shoulder, that scent. The door creaks quietly, a footstep stalling at the opening. Ethan. Leaving too. Just her and Maurice, left here to moulder quietly away. “You’re going to move on.”

“Never,” he replies resolutely.

“You will.” Insecurity strikes. “There’s going to be others there, so much more interesting than me… stronger and smarter and more bold…”

Ethan laughs. “Spence wouldn’t know what to do with someone bold and strong,” he said, earning himself a glare. “They’d turn him into origami.”

“Ignore him.” Spencer’s arms tighten. “This is a good thing, Maeve—we’re starting our lives. Our lives _together_.”

Maeve nods. “A good thing,” she repeats, determined to believe that. “And you’re excited, right? This is what you want—both of you?”

“More than _anything_ ,” says Spencer, the same hungry longing in his eyes that she’d seen after his first meeting with Gideon. She knows that look: Spencer is going to thrive in this job, it’s going to fulfil a part of him that he doesn’t even understand exists yet. And maybe, just maybe, if she’s lucky, she’s going to get to see that happen.

So strangely awed and excited by this prospect, she clings to him as he clings back, on their final night together, and neither notice that Ethan has slipped from the room without a word, and without answering her question.

**April**

The note isn’t really that surprising, not when Spencer sits down and considers everything leading to this moment. All of Ethan’s reluctance, his aversiveness to discussing their lives, Spencer’s pushiness when it came to joining the Academy at all… no, it’s not surprising.

That doesn’t mean it hurts any less.

> _This is your dream, not mine. I’m sorry._
> 
> _Ethan._

The thrill of their first day is still buzzing through Spencer as he curls up on his bed in the silent dorm and considers the empty single across from him. The covers are unruffled; the drawers, he knows, contain nothing within them. Ethan is gone. Spencer is alone.

“I’m sorry,” Spencer tells the bed, because Ethan hadn’t left a way of contacting him and, Spencer suspects, that was absolutely intentional. He wonders if they’ll see him again, and he doubts it.

In the end, everybody leaves.

**May**

Her parents come to stay and are full of comments and sly jibes at the apartment that still looks like Spencer and Ethan have just stepped out for a moment. Maeve has tried to fill all the empty space with her own things, but it’s hard for one person to take the place of three—especially when two of those three are larger than life and everything she isn’t. The closet-room is essentially still a shrine to Ethan and most of Spencer’s wardrobe still hangs next to hers. There are piles of untouched research from his PhD and an endless series of notebooks filled with his wonderful, scratchy handwriting. Her dad picks up one and goes quiet, reading through, while her mom continues picking apart the seams of Maeve’s life.

“Honestly, Maeve, you can’t live like you’re waiting for him to walk back in the door,” Mom is saying, which isn’t fair, not really. Maeve _isn’t_ living life like she’s waiting for him—if she was doing that, she’d have gone with him to Quantico. “Your studies are more important than anything that boy can do for you, we just don’t want you to marry him and settle down and, well, _settle_.” There’s worry in her voice and she means well, but Maeve bristles.

“Honey, come look at this,” Dad calls, giving Maeve a reprieve that she uses to cook dinner and feed Maurice. When she walks back into the living room, both her parents are reading Spencer’s work.

“What are you guys doing?” Maeve asks, uncomfortable. They’re not private, otherwise they’d be in their bedroom on the cramped desk shoved between the bed and wall, but her parents are hardly a forgiving audience.

“Your boyfriend, this Tracer—” Dad begins, shrugging off her mom’s soft ‘Spencer’, “how old is he?”

“Twenty-one,” she replies.

“And he wrote these—all of these?”

She’s annoyed and it shows. Annoyed at her parents for not realising she’s no longer a child and annoyed that they’ve only come here and spoken about Spencer, despite her mom pushing for her to live her own life. Wouldn’t a good start be for them to talk about anything other than her far-away boyfriend? “Yes. I’ve told you this, Dad. He received his first doctorate at _seventeen._ ”

“Impressive,” says her dad, Mom nodding along. And Maeve blinks.

That’s an incredible compliment from him.

After that moment, they don’t really complain about him anymore. It makes a nice change, even if she wishes that they’d see that he’s more than just his grey matter, and so is she.

**June**

There’s one big benefit to the dorm he still has to himself, and he’s using it to its full advantage tonight. The week had been hard, harder than usual, and he misses Maeve. Misses Ethan. Misses _home_.

But, there are benefits and they’re exploring one right now.

The door is locked and he has the phone to his ear and his pants slipped down, eyes closed as he follows her very explicit instructions. Maeve’s never been shy about sex, that’s always been him, but this is something new for them as she uses the only tool she has to get him off: her voice.

And it’s working, oh god it’s working.

“Slow down,” she’s telling him now, a smile in her voice despite her uneven breathing. “You’re so worked up.”

“Miss you,” he manages, hand wrapped around himself and almost trembling from the effort it’s taking not to move without her command. He’s discovered something tonight: it’s dangerously arousing having her tell him what to do, his entire body flushing hot every time she praises him for obeying. “Just hearing your voice is intoxicating.” His own voice is husky from exhaustion and rough from his arousal, and he can hear her shifting position on the other end of the phone and desperately wishes he could see her.

“You should try listening to yours sometime,” she responds breathlessly. “Can you get yourself close?”

He nods before remembering he has to speak. “Yes.” Eyes closed once more, he feels like he’s lost in the beat of his own rapid heart and her shaken voice, tightening his grip slightly and finding the rhythm that heats his body with every stroke of his hand. Gets himself there and hears the softest moan slip from his mouth, making noise solely for her and her alone. Keeps himself there until he’s left as just a body and her voice and the overwhelming need to be close to her.

“That’s good, that’s great, so good, Spence,” she’s panting now, and she keeps it up he’s going to finish before she gets them where they’re going together. “Stay there. I want you close when you push inside me.”

His brain short-circuits a little and he can’t respond. He knows she’s half-dressed and his brain supplies the rest; her kneeling on the bed in nothing but one of his shirts, holding the toy she’d teased him about buying when they talked about him leaving. And she’s looking him dead in the eyes, her lips bitten pink and her pupils wide, when she sinks down and—

“Maeve,” he chokes, but she’s there with him, telling him that he’s almost in, a little more, _now_. As soon as she says that, as soon as she primes him, he can feel it. What that would feel like, what she feels like, her heat and friction and hands on him, around him. When he comes hard enough that he drops the phone from sheer shock, it’s not on his bed alone in his dorm; it’s in the bed they share together and she’s holding him close without letting go, with him all the way.

When it’s over, he misses her more, not sure that the benefits are worth the distance between them.

**July**

July is the month of her realising the year is halfway over and she has to defend her own dissertation soon enough. It’s a madcap rush of a month that doesn’t slow down at all, broken up by a single harried dinner with friends that she spends making notes on her napkin about her research work and a phone call with Spencer that she’s too stressed to focus on.

He sounds tired and miserable and she wants to be there for him, she really does, but there’s a mountain of paperwork surrounding her and deadlines oncoming. He asks, “Are we growing apart?” and she wants to cry _no_ even as she wonders if it’s true. He’s so miserable, and all she can think of is the moment she gets to hang up and return to her work, her focus shattered while he speaks to her.

“We’re not,” she says finally, turning her attention to the phone and away from the stack of textbook manuscripts that she has to edit to keep her place in the doctoral program. “Spence, we’re just both so focused on our careers right now… and it’s probably not going to end anytime soon. This year is just going to be like this.”

“Distant?”

“Distant,” she agrees, blowing hair from her face and trying to calm her frantic brain from making endless checklists. “It’ll be better next year.”

“I guess so,” he says, but doesn’t sound convinced. When they hang up, he’s still glum, his, “I love you,” muted and sad. It lingers in her mind throughout the entire night and it’s the first thing she thinks of when she wakes up in the morning, asleep on a pile of textbooks with sticky notes in her hair.

She wonders if it’s worth it, right until she checks her phone:

_> Spencer: We’re going to be fantastic, I know it. After this terrible year of being away from you, we’ll prove it. Until then, I think of you daily. I love you, Soon-To-Be-Dr. Maeve Donovan. I want to marry you someday._

She saves it and looks at it whenever she thinks it’s hopeless, from that day forward.

**August**

Any classes that don’t involve his dysfunctional physiology he does wonderfully in. Unfortunately, once it becomes apparent that he’s physically inept, almost _all_ his classes involve some form of task involving the coordination of limbs he’s never quite had to coordinate to this extent before. Running leaves him flat, he can’t shoot to save his life, and the obstacle courses almost kill him on a daily basis. In hand to hand, he’s the worst there, and in the mock hard entries they make them engage in, he’s about as effective as a broken watch. Occasionally getting it right, but only occasionally.

The fact that Gideon pulls strings to keep him in despite how badly he does doesn’t make him any friends. He’s lonely and sore and counting down the days until his uncertain graduation, not all that sure that he’s going to make it there at all. On a mission to prove that he’s more than his brain, his body lets him down over and over again.

On this day, he’s fighting to get out the contacts he’d been forced to switch to after breaking his glasses, his eyes still adjusting to the foreign intrusions. The dorm is quiet. His phone is silent as he wipes away tears from poking around in his eye, wondering where Maeve is and what she’s doing, and wondering how Ethan is going and why he won’t reply. Why he hasn’t replied since leaving that note—even though Spencer could tell him that he’s not mad he left; honestly, it’s not like he’s not considering it.

It would be so easy. Just pack his bags and go before they can make him leave, picturing himself being drummed out the gates with everyone laughing. Just like school again, except this time it’s him failing at something he’s never wanted more.

There’s a knock at his door and he opens it miserably to find Maeve standing there.

“Surprise!” she says, and he just stares. And stares. And stares.

And smiles.

“You have no idea how much I’ve missed you,” he tells her honestly, and lets her in.

She stays for the night, teases him about his contacts, and by the time she leaves, he remembers why he’s doing this.

They’re going to make their mark on the world, both of them, no matter how hard it is.

**September**

It’s the determination and the exhaustion warring in his eyes that inspires her to do it, no matter how terrifying the prospect of confronting someone is. Spencer has worked too hard now to have this blow up in his face—she knows he’ll make it, she _knows_ he will, he just needs the support.

It’s been a long time since she’s been in New Orleans, and the weather is as unpleasant as she remembers. She visits Carly first and catches up, and then goes hunting for a jazzy idiot with a spine made of wet tissue.

He’s playing at a seedy lounge and she sits and waits with Carly in a sticky booth while he finishes his set and makes his reluctant way down to them, sweaty and grumpy and already frowning. “I’m not going back,” Ethan warns her. “I made a mistake—I’m no G-man and I never will be. Same as I told Spencer, that’s his dream. Mine is here.”

She doesn’t flinch, seeing Carly look at her curiously. “This has nothing to do with your dreams and everything to do with your friendship,” she scolds him, crossing her arms and doing her best to glare. It seems to work. He crumples in front of her, shuffling his feet shamefacedly and failing to make eye-contact. “He graduates next month. Move your ass and be there.”

“But, my music…”

She cuts him off: “It can wait. I’m here, and I have a dissertation due in a month. Or is he really that unimportant to you?” She lets her gaze cut to his chest, where there’s a scar the width of a stranger’s knife.

But all he says is, “Maybe,” and walks away.

“Wow,” says Carly when he’s gone. “What happened to mousey Maeve Donovan?”

And Maeve, still reeling, shrugs and says, “She grew up.”

**October**

He’s dazed after he graduates the Academy, wandering aimlessly through the crowd of well-wishers and onlookers congratulating their own loved ones. He knows Maeve is here somewhere but isn’t entirely sure he’s cognizant enough to find his way to her.

He’s done it. He’s graduated.

He’s an FBI agent.

All the pomp and ceremony doesn’t feel so overwrought anymore, not after hearing his name called out. _Special_ Agent Spencer Reid. A real agent. A real _somebody_. Not just skinny, anxious Spencer Reid anymore, who can’t stick up for himself to save a life. From now on, he’s the kind of man who can stop two college kids on their way home from the bar from being mugged and hurt. No more freezing. No more panicking.

The smile on his face is wide and silly and he can’t wipe it away, no matter how much he tries.

Someone calls his name, touches his elbow, and he turns expecting Maeve. He’s still smiling, still giddy, as he finds Ethan standing there looking sheepish.

“Hey there, Very Special Agent,” Ethan says without meeting his gaze. “Look at you. You did it. I’m—”

And he has to stop because Spencer is hugging him, quick and fast and awkward. When they break apart, they’re both grinning, both unsure of where they stand, Ethan stepping back and shoving hair from his eyes. But Spencer doesn’t care that he left at all, because he’s here _now_ and that’s all that matters.

“Spencer!” cries Maeve, and she’s suddenly there with her arms around him too. The moment between him and Ethan is over, but the warm glow remains. “Oh! You did it! I knew you would! I’m so proud!”

He’s proud too. For the first time ever, he’s achieved something that’s not just solely because he’s smart—there’s more to being an agent than intelligence. Maeve has always told him that he’s not just his brain, and now he’s finally proving that that’s true.

And he’s sure that soon he’ll be able to show the world that.

**November**

She’s done it.

Dissertation successfully defended, she’s graduating. She’s done, she’s done, she’s done; she gets home and can do nothing but cry with happiness or maybe sheer relief, dancing around the empty apartment with Maurice in her arms as she chants for her audience of two that, “I’m done, I’m done, I’m done!”

There’s an email in her inbox that she opens on a whim, seeing the name of the research firm she’d applied to in DC—it’s her dream job, proximity to Spencer set aside, but she’s vastly underqualified. Despite that, she’d applied. Despite that, she’s got it. She begins in January, once graduation ceremonies are over, and she wonders how they’d known to make their acceptance of her so perfectly timed.

Another dance around the living room, too giddy to even chant this time.

Maurice doesn’t seem to appreciate how big this moment is but she doesn’t resent him his ignorance, instead just burying her face into his fluffy fur and using him to muffle her yells. It’s a stupid, giddy, crazy moment where she lets herself forget that she’s an adult with decorum and responsibilities now and just lets herself be nothing but excited. When she’s done, she ceremoniously tears out every sticky note from every textbook she can find, throwing them in the air and whooping as they whirl down. No one is here to judge her as she puts those books away and kicks the sticky notes aside, no one cares.

Except, someone cares. Several people, in fact.

She rings her parents first, crying again as her mom announces proudly that there’s a new Doctor Donovan in town—or soon to be.

She rings Spencer next.

“Hi,” she says breathless when he answers, “guess what?”

He guesses correctly on the first try, of course, but she doesn’t mind.

She’s _done_.

**December**

It snows in December and he goes out to see his new home in the snow for the first time, a quiet time to appreciate Quantico and DC while covered in a white blanket like Vegas had never been. This early in the season, it’s sparse and quick to melt, but he appreciates it nonetheless.

His aimless drive takes a purpose and he goes past the offices to pick up the paperwork to finish getting him instated at the Behavioural Analysis Unit as Gideon’s trainee, bypassing the usual eight years wait to get in. If he’s uncomfortable with the rules being bent for him, he’s comforted by the knowledge that in the BAU his talents can be keenly utilised to make the most difference to the world. He’s going to make his mark, make his mom and Maeve proud, and nothing can stop him excelling.

Except, probably, his crippling social anxiety.

Gideon is there waiting for him though, smiling when he walks in without the Visitor’s Badge clipped to his lanyard for the first time. “How are you finding deskwork?” he asks.

“Fascinating,” replies Spencer honestly, “but stifling. I know where I want to be.”

It’s right here.

Gideon just nods, the smile vanishing as his gaze drifts across a series of photographs on the back wall of his office. “Yes,” he says quietly, “I really think you do.”

The snow has begun again when Spencer leaves the Navy Yard. He drives into the night, the world foggy and new around him, and he knows: the year of the grind is over. Soon, Maeve will be here to begin her work and they’ll be together again, both making a difference.

He’s never been so excited for time to pass.


	5. 2005

**January**

The apartment they’ve chosen is at a rough midpoint between their workplaces, despite the fact that his commute is slightly more awkward than hers and often at rough hours. Equality, he’s determined, will be the cornerstone of this next part of their lives. They’re under no misconceptions that this is going to be easy. Her work will be hard and his is even harder, both working the calamitous hours of the new professionals with their feet still barely through the doors. Their free time will be minimal and unlikely to coincide.

Despite all of this, on the day she moves to their DC apartment, he’s ridiculously excited. The apartment has been cleaned to within an inch of its life with places he’s set up just for Maurice to creep into and lurk about in, every room filled with blank spaces waiting for her belongings to slip in and complete. He’s been half of a whole since coming here alone and finally, today, those halves are coming back together.

She arrives ahead of her parents, the moving truck, and schedule, texting ahead just so he’s waiting out the front when she bounds from her car. “Maeve!” he manages to say before she’s sprinted towards him and leapt into his arms, with such force that he’s made into a cliché that whirls in a giddy circle around with her, the only way to keep on his feet and avoid dropping them both on the ground. Then he whirls her again, one more time, because her weight is familiar and she’s the half he’s needed—he kisses her there knowing the neighbours are probably watching, letting it linger because he’s missed this so much.

“Upstairs,” she breathes, her eyes burning into his as he slides her down his body to her own feet, her hands finding his ass and pulling him tight in a hungry motion he knows from rote.

“To see the apartment?” he queries, in case he’s read the mood wrong.

She just looks at him and smiles.

There’s a small hiccup in their plan, as they bolt back down half-dressed and barely sensible to find the grumpy Maurice still in his carrier in the backseat, but once he’s soothed and let loose in his new domain, they return to their relentless celebration of each other. They’re barely done in time for her parents to arrive, but it’s worth every hurried minute.

They’re home together, and this is where they plan to stay.

**February**

She begins her work in January and, by February, she knows it’s everything she’s ever wanted, so immersive that she feels herself settle firmly into place: this, she knows, is exactly where she needs to be. Born for this moment and this work, her mind eagerly leaping at every challenge thrown her way. She’s given the space she needs to follow her own lines of research, working underneath a senior researcher for now but with the whispered promises of a lab of her own if she excels within the first year. Underqualified for the position maybe, but now that she’s in they’re looking closer at her and desperate to keep her with their firm.

She’s needed and wanted and possibly even admired and it’s all so heady, she now suddenly understands what drives Spencer so hard. This success, it’s intoxicating, and she loses weeks to the relentless chase of her own aspirations, coming home every night—sometimes to Spencer waiting, sometimes to a quiet dinner and early bed. And it’s amazing, always, but she does have some regrets.

Her work is long but structured. Spencer’s is long, and erratic. If he’s there, he’s often sleeping, exhausted by what he’s seen. If he’s not, he’s miles away and with his cell redirecting personal calls. They see each other sometimes and usually only for a hurried meal and to sleep side-by-side.

She always wakes alone.

**March**

It’s a very strange feeling for Spencer to realise that he’s bound to the whims of his body. It’s not like he’s always been unaware that his body has whims of its own, it’s just that it’s never really been a problem before. His work keeps him busy for months that seem to slip by without pausing for thought, until suddenly it’s March and he realises that he misses her touch. It’s a bone-deep touch-hunger that hits him midway through a case when Elle brushes past him and pats him teasingly on the arm when he twitches away from her. It’s not solely because of his discomfort with the touch of strangers—it’s also because he’s suddenly realised that he dearly, dearly misses Maeve, trying to remember the last time they’d held each other longer than a cursory hug before bed and coming up with the frantic sex of a few months before when she’d moved home.

“You alright there, brains?” Morgan is teasing, and Spencer tucks that realisation away to the side of his brain for later examination, returning to the task at hand.

That night, he’s determined to have some time to themselves. He races home, beats her there, and has dinner bubbling away on the stove as he hunts through the still-unpacked moving boxes for the scented candles she always uses as a subliminal message that she wants sex. Entirely unconsciously, he’s sure—they’re just the ones she uses when she’s feeling romantically-minded but, classical conditioning in full force, he now can’t help but associate the scent of them burning with an expectation of arousal. Hopefully, it works the other way around too.

“Oh,” she says when she comes in to the candles set and their dinner ready for them on the coffee table. They’re going to eat seated on cushions, low and comfortable in a veritable nest of throw-pillows and blankets, with the hope that he can easily pull her into them after for a dessert of a kind. “Oh, Spence, this is beautiful.” Eyes brimming with tears, she’s excited and happy and, he thinks privately, probably just as accidentally conditioned by the candles as he is.

It’s three hours later and they’re naked in a sweaty pile of limbs on the floor. She’s ready and he’s readier and he pauses right before the moment he slips inside to kiss her endlessly, rolling her over so he’s on top and can take control as fiercely as he wants to. Everything in this moment is building to their mouths together, their hands reaching for each other, his slipping down between them so he can guide his way—

His cell rings. Maeve covers her mouth as he actually deflates with disappointment, looking at it and then at her with every part of his body screaming in frustration.

“Work calls,” she says gently, and brings her hand up to cup his chin. “Raincheck?”

“Damn,” he replies, and goes to answer it.

And the relentless cycle of just missing each other continues.

**April**

The day comes that she gets home early from work to the empty apartment and no text from him on her cell. It’s a little unusual. Even when he’s away for some time, he texts to let her know. This radio silence is, well, not _new_ , but a little off. But she still thinks nothing of it until she turns on the TV and sees _FBI Standoff_ scrolling across the news ticker.

She knows it’s him immediately. She doesn’t know how, because it’s another good two minutes before the presenter even mentions the BAU being on scene with two of their own being held hostage by an unknown number of armed assailants. Two of the five BAU field agents; there’s nothing to like about those odds.

And there’s absolutely nothing she can do about it.

The next hour is her sitting on the couch in a rigidly prone position, back ramrod straight and hands in her lap to stop from reaching for the cell-phone sitting silent on the coffee table in front of her. She wants it to ring. Needs it to stay silent. A call could be _I’m alive_ or it could be _I’m sorry ma’am, but…_ The TV switches to a soap opera. She watches the whole thing and sees nothing. Adverts. For medication, for fast-food, for insurance programs. None that help her partner come home. Nothing that tells her how this night is going to end.

The news returns. It repeats the same information as before.

Her cell stays quiet.

She’s been crying, silently, for some time now, and Maurice is on her lap. He _mrrrps_ at her and she can’t reassure him because there’s no reassurance here.

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There’s nothing she can do but wait.

She wonders if this is the first time he’s been under fire. She wonders if he’s been shot at before. Knows he doesn’t carry a gun, so he’s in there _unarmed._ They never talk about this. They haven’t before. They haven’t had the ‘what if you don’t come home’ conversation, the ‘what happens to me after’. Now, she gets up finally, going for a walk through the apartment. To his office, their office, but his desk. Goes through his paperwork looking for any sign that he planned for this—a will, maybe. A letter addressed to her.

There’s a noise from the living room: breaking news. Images of crying patients, sobbing doctors, first responders rushing around a scene of calamity. One dead: the shooter. She doesn’t see him, but he’s alive.

She cries again, curled up on the couch waiting for him to return, and doesn’t call him because she can’t stand him seeing these tears.

When the front door opens and he limps in— _limps_ , and she knows now that he _was_ in that hospital standoff—he just stands there and looks at her. Arms by his side and posture so sunken that she’d have known something had happened even if she hadn’t been watching the news still replaying events on the screen for them both, as though to narrate what he’s been through. And he comes to her, slowly and painfully, sinking onto the couch beside her and almost falling into the arms she holds open for him.

He’s crying.

“I shot him,” he says, and she can tell it’s only just beginning to hit. While he breathes wetly against her, whole body shaking, she runs her hands over the body she knows so well, undoing his shirt and finding bruises and marks that weren’t there before. “He would have killed us, Hotch and me both, so I killed him. He was a murderer—I did the right thing. I did my job.”

“I want us to get married,” her mouth says without her brain’s permission, and derails his panic. He stares at her, and she shrugs, unable to think of what else to say. It’s not a fully realised thought, not at all, but now that it’s out there, she wants it more than anything. Some tether to bring him home to her, whole and well, each and every time he’s in danger.

“I can’t answer that right now,” is all he says, beginning to shake. “I can’t, Maeve, I can’t think, I can’t—”

She knows this. She holds him as he struggles not to fall apart, and he tells her everything that happened that day. Every last part of it, right down to the feeling of looking up a gun barrel and seeing his death waiting in the end.

Four days later, she wakes up alone and finds the table set for her breakfast, a half-chewed piece of lined paper littered about the floor below her chair. It’s a note, the writing obscured by Maurice’s attempts to eat it before she could read its contents.

When she texts him to find out what it said, he responds with _yes._

**May**

“Reid. How can I help you?” Hotch is polite, always, but today it’s also tempered with curiosity. Probably because Spencer has just slid an FD-292 on his desk, with every t crossed and i dotted. It’s also photocopied—in triplicate. “You’re getting married?”

“Eek,” says Spencer, choking on his own words at the sound of _that_ said in Hotch’s firm, ‘this is happening’ kind of voice. “Yes? Yes. Yes!”

He’s made a fool of himself, absolutely, but instead of laughing him out of the office—or rather, one eyebrow raising him out of the office, a Hotch kind of laugh—Hotch just smiles and says, “Congratulations! Have you settled on a date or is this all very new?”

The information he’s asking is all laid out in the form below his neatly folded hands, but Spencer understands that this is a form of small talk, of creating intra-team bonds based on interest in each other’s lives and personalities. It helps them work more closely together. There’s a purpose to almost everything Hotch does, and this is the purpose of looking so happy for him despite barely _knowing_ him.

“October,” Spencer mumbles, and knows he’s blushing. And he doesn’t have to do what he does next, adding this extra information, but he does because he’s _proud_ of this, excited for this, and it’s hard not to tell the world. He wishes he could tell everyone, but he just isn’t comfortable enough with them yet to invite them into that kind of intimacy. “I, I mean, we… we love Halloween. It’s a Halloween wedding.”

“That’s wonderful, Spencer,” Hotch says in a voice that isn’t professional or purposeful at all—it’s just genuinely happy for him.

Spencer beams, flushed with a wondering sense of _belonging_ that has his traitorous brain blurting out, “Would you like to come? To the, ah, err… wedding.” He pauses, blinks, and realises what he’s asked before adding a rapid, “My wedding,” just to clarify.

“Work allowing, I’d be honoured,” Hotch replies carefully, “but don’t feel obligated to invite the team under an assumption that we’ll be disappointed if you don’t. You’re new, still finding your feet. No one will fault you for keeping this private.”

Spencer nods. “I understand,” he says, flushing again because he’s unsure if he’s being reprimanded or comforted. “But I would like to see them there, if that’s at all possible.”

“Even Gideon?”

That’s met with a laugh that Spencer is surprised to have voiced in front of his stern-faced boss. “Of course,” he says, “but I don’t think Gideon and weddings get along.”

**June**

Her parents are painfully excited about the wedding, which is surprising because Maeve had thought this would count under ‘settling’ to them. But, despite any reservations they may have had about Spencer in the past, they fully support her in this. Them.

They support _them_ in this—her and Spencer, together. Married.

The thought is still utterly thrilling to her.

Her parents are at their apartment for dinner, and Spencer is holding her hand under the table. Her mom is going on endlessly about church weddings and caterers and the names of so many organisers that Maeve’s head spins just from listening to it. Spencer is quiet, and she wonders what he’s thinking about. She stops wondering suddenly, thinking of a church wedding with the groom’s side almost empty. Ethan is invited, as is his team from work and his mom, of course, but Spencer is a man with very few people to fill seats. And he’s always been fine with it being like that, she can’t bear to see him so quiet at the thought.

“No churches,” she says.

Her mother doesn’t seem to hear, continuing to talk. Maeve flushes, wanting to speak again but nervous of speaking out.

She’s saved by the unlikeliest person.

“Maeve said no churches, honey,” says her dad. There’s silence as her mom goes quiet, looking from her husband to Maeve. “I know you’re excited, but this is Maeve and Spencer’s day, not ours. How about we listen to what they want?”

Maeve is as shocked as her mother is. This is… new.

Very new.

“Dad?” she says uncertainly, but he simply gestures for her to continue. She can’t. She’s speechless.

It’s Spencer who speaks, his voice soft but wistful. “Outside,” he murmurs, and continues when they look at him: “I think we should be married outside… there’ll be fall leaves everywhere. Can you imagine?”

“Oh, Spencer,” Maeve manages, her breath tight in her chest and his hand wrapped around hers. “That’s perfect.”

**July**

His temper is shorter than it’s ever been, and he has a shortlist of things that he’s blaming. This case which has dragged on for two weeks with no respite for any of them, the distance between him and Maeve, the stress of planning a—even a small—wedding, the fact that it’s been _months_ since he’s had a full night to spend with her. They’d had a hurried tumble two, maybe three, weeks before, one that had been all hands and her sleepily trying to help him dress after so he wasn’t late for work and had almost left him feeling worse than before, despite the sexual relief. It was no real relief at all when it was so _brusque._

And he refuses to admit that he’s sexually frustrated because he’s _not_ , he’s absolutely not. He doesn’t need sex to be happy in his relationship, and he is happy in his relationship—he’s never been happier, except maybe in those glorious months at college when all they’d had was time and each other…

He texts Ethan when he’s given a moment to himself, Hotch now putting them on rotation to try and stave off the exhaustion of being on a two-week case with no home respite.

_Our jobs are going to tear us apart <_

_> Ethan: You and Maeve, or me and you? Honey, we’ve talked about this, you know my job comes first but I’ll always make time for you and the kids._

_Ha. <_

Of course, Ethan is no help. Spencer throws his cell down and reaches for a casefile, Hotch’s new rules about ‘downtime being downtime’ be damned.

But his cell buzzes again.

_> Ethan: wow you sound shitty. When was the last time you got laid?_

_What the hell does that have to do with anything? <_

Silence. He doesn’t respond.

It’s infuriating.

_I’ll have you know I am an adult who can monitor my moods without interruption from my limbic system, thank you very much <_

More silence.

_I’m very happy with my sex life <_

And the zero replies continue until his cell dings again, this time from Maeve. Spencer reads it, twice, and then decides he hates the world and everything in it, but most especially Ethan.

_> Maeve: uh why is Ethan texting me tips on how to improve our sex lives?_

He sends back _what sex lives_ and immediately regrets it. It’s only going to spark an argument, and it’s not their fault and he should be an adult and—

_> Maeve: I know. It’s upsetting me too. I’m sorry, I’d change it if I could…_

“I don’t deserve you,” he tells the cell-phone and the woman on the other side, his temper dispelling. They can get through this, just like they’ve gotten through every other obstacle life has thrown at them so far.

It doesn’t really fix anything though. He still snaps at Morgan when the man makes a joke about him talking to a prostitute and, when he does finally get home, instead of a warm welcome he walks into an argument about the fact that Maeve’s leaving for the only weekend he can guarantee he’s going to be there. A conference in San Francisco and he’s bitchy about it, bitter, slamming the bedroom door and refusing to say goodbye. Because, unlike him, she’s not a child, she says goodbye anyway.

He’s miserable and he misses her and, yes, he’s starting to realise that maybe he also misses the sex, and he doesn’t know how much longer he can stand being alone when she’s supposed to be beside him.

Wasn’t the hard year supposed to be over, or is this the rest of their lives?

**August**

It’s a combination of him flipping from being foul-tempered to him being sorry about being bad-tempered that sparks most of the arguments they’ve had over the past month, even though most of those arguments have been whispered ones before they fall asleep or texted to each other from hundreds of miles apart. As much as she almost wants to say that it’s just _sex_ , she knows it’s not and she’s been missing the physicality of them for weeks before Spencer’s sex drive had caught up and started affecting his temper too. It’s the comfort and closeness of the time spent focused purely on each other, the fact that, during sex, they can’t talk about work or friends or family or their upcoming wedding—they just focus on each other and how they feel in that moment.

And she comes up with a plan.

“Scheduled sex,” she announces over dinner as he’s falling asleep in his steak, and he blinks and stares at her, adorably confused in this moment. “We schedule it in. Twice a week, every week. If you’re called away, we bump the time-slot to the next day until we reach one where we’re both home, but once we’re home, we _have_ the sex no matter what moods we’re in.”

“That’s…” He’s studying the chart, still blinking. “Why are there different colours? And why did you make a chart?”

“Because efficiency turns you on,” she teases. “And there’s only two colours. Red is a _secret_.” She adds a wink, tapping her finger on the red Thursday—the second Thursday of every month is going to be a treat, or the nearest date to it. She watches that turn over in his brain.

“Will this work?” he asks, lowering his fork.

“Well, let’s find out.” She makes a show of checking the clock, then checking the schedule. “We have forty-five minutes until our first appointment in the bedroom, Dr. Reid. I expect you there, _without_ bells or any other form of clothing on.”

There’s silence, before a slow, awkward kind of smile works its way onto his face. “Or else?” he murmurs.

“Or else,” she hums, abandoning the chart and slipping up behind him, hands working tight circles into his tense shoulders, “I take you wherever you are… however I want.”

Sex right _now_ hadn’t been the plan, but he’s already side-eyeing her like he’s trying to will her pants off by thought alone, so she’s not surprised when he leans back into her chest and says, “How about we test that theory now?” with a nervous glance at his cell-phone like he expects it to bite him.

“Hmm, I’m not sure you’ve been appropriately warned of the dire circumstances disobeying will land you in,” she teases, seeing him pause to wait for her to finish. “You’re doing the dishes when it hits time, well, guess we’re both getting wet and sudsy… watching TV, lap full of me…”

“Oh no,” Spencer squeaks, cheeks flushing red and his ears turning red too.

“Mowing the lawn? Well, I hope the neighbours are ready for a hell of a show…”

He blinks. Once. Twice. Again. Swallows hard and whimpers, “We don’t have a lawn. Also, I think we should, uh, go. Now. I’m co—done. I’m _done,_ done with, uh, dinner.”

She watches him as he tries to stand in a hurried rush and almost knocks his plate flying, turning into her arms and grabbing her to pull her into a bruising, hungry kiss with the chair bumping between them. Sidling around that chair so he can pull her tighter, he’s already hard and she asks him, “Where?”

He answers with a voice like he’s already fucking her, “Wherever you want.” Kisses her again and lifts her from the ground, ignoring her gasp. “ _However_ you want.”

It’s decided after that: the schedule is a rousing success.

**September**

Ethan, of course, straight up ignores his wish not to have a bachelor’s party, dragging him out to a smoky club that’s tucked right back behind a larger one, quiet and private enough that once Spencer’s been forced into a few drinks, he’s able to be coaxed onto the dancefloor. It helps that it’s just him and Ethan—it helps even more when Maeve shows up, having gotten bored and asked to join them. Somehow, even with just the three of them, it’s the perfect celebration of them moving forward in their lives.

“To my best friend, who’s getting married next month!” Ethan hollers to the amused onlookers, who he’s been carousing with for most of the night leaving Spencer and Maeve to sway drunkenly together to the beat.

Maeve vanishes for a moment, what feels like an hour, leaving Spencer to wander around looking for her before finding himself seated on the floor waiting. He’s the unsteady kind of tipsy, watching the lights flicker above through the smoke-filled dancefloor. A faster beat picks up; someone trips on his legs.

“Oh no,” says the someone, and Maeve appears from the gloom. As beautiful as she’s always been, she helps him up and he kisses her. “Who put you there?”

He remembers their first Halloween and laughs, pulling her onto the dancefloor and whirling giddily, knowing he’s probably going to drop her, but sure she won’t let him. Somewhere, distantly, he can hear Ethan cheering them on, but he doesn’t really care. It’s a wonderful, sticky, too-loud night, and it ends abruptly with the buzz of his cell in his pocket. Their holidays have all been cut short, Elle under suspicion of murder after a bloody trail led right to her hotel door.  

He leaves them there, his soon-to-be-wife and his best friend who promises he’ll get drunk enough for the both of them, and goes to work.

“Where were you?” asks Gideon, seeing him walk in dressed nicely with his hair all tangled.

“Nowhere important,” he answers quietly, because the job will always come first.

 

**October**

She marries her astonishing man with his waxed-paper boat by the pond in the park where she saw him first. The sky is cloudy and grim with threads of sunshine fighting to get through, and the lawn around them is carpeted with a blanket of autumn leaves. It’s gold and orange and every shade of fall as she sees him standing there, dressed in a suit that’s tailored just right with his tie both violently orange and bedecked with Halloween pumpkins.

He surprises her once more.

As she walks towards him, the crowd gathered to watch them celebrate their love stand and move away. She’s startled—this isn’t what they’d planned, but he holds his hand out to her and she takes it and lets him lead her onwards. It’s to the pond he leads her, the water still on this quiet day, and she notes that everyone gathered is holding a boat of their own. As she watches, in groups of two and three, they all walk forward and set their boats on the water where the wind pulls them together in a fleet of paper-white that’s the same hue as her dress. Her parents, her friends, Ethan, Diana: the team aren’t there because work calls, as always, but he doesn’t seem to mind. He holds her hands as they watch the boats set sail and, when she looks at him, he’s almost crying.

“We’re going to have to fetch those out after,” he says with a soft smile just for her, despite his words carrying. She’s crying too, watching the boats he’s made for her and given to their family to sail in their honour, but he’s not done. “Because I’ve written a reason why I’m standing here, why I love you so completely, on each and every one.”

She looks to the pond. The boats are uncountable. She’s floored.

Mousey, insignificant Maeve Donovan—soon to be Reid, because she wants to take his name, would be honoured to, even if she still uses her maiden name in her work—, is loved by someone enough to sail a fleet of paper boats for her, and she can’t think of what those boats could say. Is there really so much about her to love?

The answer is simple, really. She could write hundreds in his honour, is it so hard to think he could do the same for her?

“I would have kept making them,” Spencer is saying.

“But you ran out of reasons?” she teases.

“No,” he replies, and looks at his shoes. She wonders if his socks are odd. “I ran out of paper.”

She marries that man with the boats floating around them, and she never, ever looks back.

It’s an absolutely significant day, and neither of them will ever forget it.

**November**

They replace Elle with Emily Prentiss and she’s every bit as sharp as Elle without any of the harsher edges, at least, that’s his first summation. She’s easier to approach, easier to read—and he’s sure that both of these things are carefully orchestrated fronts to conceal whatever she feels needs concealing. Despite the fact that he’s sure that she’s hiding more than she’s showing, he likes her. Elle’s seat doesn’t feel quite as damningly empty with her in it, even if they’re both painfully guarded about their personal lives to begin with.

There’s a wedding photo on his desk, tucked behind the monitor so it’s hidden from uncaring eyes, and he’s looking at it today when Emily leans over him and tugs it out.

“Look at you,” she says, and there’s an element of surprise to her voice that both irritates and bolsters him. “You clean up nice, Reid.”

“Thanks,” he mumbles.

She eyes him and goes right for what she must know he can’t resist responding to: “Your wife is gorgeous.”

There it is. If he’s being played, he’s glad to be so, beaming proudly and blurting out, “She really, really is—that photo barely does her justice.” Which is saying something, because Maeve is beautiful in her wedding dress surrounded by the autumn leaves, ethereal, and he knows he’s still got it bad because he’s sure the English language is inadequate to describe her.

“Must be tough keeping a relationship together with this job,” Emily is musing, more to herself than him.

“It is,” Spencer admits, “but we’ll never give up trying.”

She laughs, sliding the photo back into its hidden alcove and asking him how long he’s been married for. He could tell her down to the second: he doesn’t. “About three weeks,” he says instead, and blushes at her surprise. It’s understandable, her shock. He’s not sure that he’s gotten used to the ring on his finger yet either. He’s not sure he ever wants to. He’ll be happy to continue being surprised by Maeve for the rest of their lives.

**December**

That year ends unlike the last. They’re together, they’re married, they’re employed. They’re as in love as they’d begun it, curled together by the space-heater in their dinky little apartment surrounded by books and their shared lives. The living room can’t fit a full-sized tree, so she’s bought a little model one and sat it proudly on the coffee table, made from wood and wire and tiny, sparkling little lights. Maurice keeps knocking it over so the branches are bent one way, but they don’t care. It’s just like the rest of their lives: a little bent but nowhere near broken, and they’re proud of it anyway.

She gets him a new shoulder bag to replace the one he’s carried since college, worn out completely following this last year. It’s not the perfect gift, nor the most romantic, but it’s something that he’s going to carry daily, no matter how far he goes from her, and she slips a new book in there for him that she’s written all her own thoughts in the margins.

He gets her a tiny paper boat on a pin. It’s tiny enough to sit on her nail but perfectly detailed.

“Wear it when I’m not with you,” he says, and she knows what he’s not saying. _I’ll always come home to you._ It’s a lucky charm of a kind, and she’s never without it after.

And another year passes.


	6. 2006

**January**

There’s an FBI ball in January that Emily insists he attend, announcing that if she has to dress up, then so does he. The ball welcomes partners of the attendees and, eventually, he works up the courage to ask Maeve to accompany him. To his surprise, she’s remarkably eager, pinning the invitation up on the fridge and dragging him along to find outfits to wear.

When the night rolls around, he thinks he might be ill. This isn’t an experience that he’s used to, balls or formal occasions or walking around in front of his colleagues in his nicest clothes. The worry about everything—will he have to eat in front of them, what if the food is _shared_ , what if there’s an emergency, what if he embarrasses himself—is overwhelming and he finds himself sitting on his bed in his socks and shirt, staring down at the ties he can’t choose between and thinking he might throw up.

Hands cover his, Maeve kneeling between his bare legs in nothing but a slip. “I’ll be right there beside you,” she says, and she is.

They walk into the hall side by side and without being noticed beyond the person checking their invitations at the door. That’s how Spencer likes it—keeping to the side with Maeve’s hand in his, noticing everything but his eyes always drawn back to how beautiful she looks in her deep green dress that clings so nicely to her body that he wants to trace his hands down the side just to feel how smooth it falls. But he doesn’t get the chance, mostly because they’re in public but also because he spots Hotch moments after that, standing beside a blonde woman Spencer assumes is his wife, Haley.

“Reid, glad you made it,” Hotch says with a genuine smile as the two of them approach, stepped aside so that the rest of the team are revealed near him. They’ve clearly been catching up and Spencer suddenly finds him and Maeve the centre of a range of eyes, expressions ranging from gleeful to stunned, his own cheeks flushing red.

“Hi,” he mumbles, feeling Maeve grip his hand and squeeze tight. “Uh, everyone, this is… my wife, Maeve.”

His wife, who is terrifyingly quickly whisked away by JJ and Emily combined, leaving Spencer to face Morgan as Hotch leads Haley out to dance.

“Reid, Reid, Reid,” Morgan says, shaking his head with a wide grin on his face, “my _boy_ , you’ve been holding out on me!”

“Have I?” asks Spencer, confused.

“Yes!” is the retort. “Your wife is beautiful! I didn’t think you had it in you, man.” Despite his gentle ribbing, Morgan is beaming. “You just both looks so… happy, dude, you look so happy.”

Spencer’s pretty sure that, after that, he’s joyful enough that nothing in this night can knock him down, not even when Hotch asks Maeve for a dance and returns her flustered and blushing.

“He’s so handsome,” is all she says after, which Spencer can’t really disagree with.

**February**

Spencer goes missing, and a part of Maeve goes missing with him.

They alert her this time. They have to. He’s gone for three days.

It’s Hotch who contacts her, informing her that her husband had been taken, _abducted_ , and that they’re working on bringing him home. That they’ll keep in contact.

That’s a lie. She hears nothing until the three days are up and she’s alerted as to which hospital Spencer has been taken to. It’s a long flight and a longer drive there, the whole time sunk in a numb kind of waiting that’s been her life for the past three days. Nothing but the fear from the previous year, but realer this time, calling in sick to work and sitting on their bed with her wedding ring tight in her palm and her cell on the charger beside her. Checking it every five minutes like clockwork, just in case she’d missed it ringing.

Three days of horror she’ll never, ever forget, no matter how much she desperately wants to.

Hotch is waiting outside the hospital as she climbs out of the cab and walks on unsteady legs towards him, only distantly aware that she hasn’t showered, has barely done anything with her hair except to pull it back into a messy ponytail, that she’s looking at him like she hates him. In this moment, she does, despite the exhaustion written across every line of his body. Maybe he saved Spencer, she doesn’t know—all she knows is that he’s supposed to stop this kind of thing happening, and that he kept her in the dark. Some small part of her, twisted small and tight in her chest, wonders if he’d have told her if Spencer had died. If this is the bit where they say, “I’m sorry, ma’am, but—”

“Maeve, I’m sorry, but—” he begins, and everything goes quiet and still. There had been traffic behind her, even at this hour in this small, Georgian town, but it must have all up and driven away because she can’t hear a thing anymore. Just a wiry buzzing and the distant feeling that she’s falling. She’s fallen. The asphalt burns against her knees, her fingers pulled painfully by the handle of the bag she’d packed for Spencer. Something falls from her shirt at the impact, something that she stares at when she regains her mind.

It’s the paper-boat pin he gave her.

There are hands around her, helping her up. Warm on her arms and, when she stumbles again, pulling her close. She’s suddenly being held and, despite her _fury_ at this man and his failure to protect her heart, she lets herself be held until her mind regains enough equilibrium to register him repeating the words, “He’s alive, he’s alive, he’s alive,” to her in a reassuring, steady hum.

She can’t even think to hear what he’s trying to tell her, just begs him to take her to Spencer, _now_.

Three days ago, preferably.

And, he does.

It turns out that what Hotch had been trying to tell her is that the man that took her husband, that took her beautiful, kind, vibrantly _alive_ husband, did his best to kill him. Beat and tortured and drugged him. Came so close to succeeding. The doctors tell her that he’s suffering withdrawals, that he’s on anti-epilepsy medication to stall any _more_ seizures—a seizure! —, that his heart-rate is being monitored to ensure that it continues on, as though that’s ever been a doubt before.

She’s told all this and then she walks in to find him asleep, but visibly broken. Bruised and battered all over and laying so still and rigid in the hospital bed that she knows his sleep is chemical, not natural. There’s a bandage on his head and around his elevated foot, the arm that’s visible to her marred by a line of swollen, red track-marks. She counts them. Fifteen. Fifteen times someone had taken his arm and forced a needle into it. As she counts them, she traces her fingers down, finding the places where his binds had ripped and torn at his skin as he’d struggled.

She takes the pin from her shirt and pins it to his, curling up beside him and waiting to wake. This room is a nightmare that she knows there’s no waking easily from.

But, whatever’s coming, she’s ready to face it with him.

This will not break them.

**March**

Hankel’s taken his wonderful life and he’s flushed it through with pain. Spencer can’t take it anymore, he can’t take the cravings or the nightmares or the way that everything reminds him of that shack. He can’t take the way that his struggles affect Maeve, as she stubbornly refuses to let him suffer alone. He’s reduced to asking the most basic of things from her, for assistance with the simplest of tasks. The final straw is when he struggles to bathe alone, foot unable to be wet in the shower and his body too sore and stiff for him to fold himself into their tiny bath. It’s mortifying, despite her having seen him naked before, sitting in the shower as she helps him wash without getting his foot wet, watching as she lingers over the fading marks on his arms.

She has nightmares too, and he knows she’s trying to hide them from him. Knows because he lies awake more often than he doesn’t, watching as her sleep turns subtly restless. When she startles awake, and she always does, she’s half asleep and barely coherent, rolling to him and reaching frantically for any part of him she can find. When she finds him there, still there, she cries silently even when, half the time, she’s already drifted back to sleep. It’s such an unconscious, wordless pain that he’s broken by it, adding it to everything else he’s fighting against.

He dreams of getting high, of the clarity of that rush. The whispered promise of an answer to all this pain at the end of a needle, of the drifting nothingness that had followed. Tobias had been right. By the end, he had wanted it. Wanted it still. Wonders if he can make Maeve smile again if he’s so stoned that he can smile himself, even as he knows that that’s not the outcome of that choice at all.

When left alone, he’s frantic. Securing the doors and the windows and checking every lock, sticking paper over both their webcams to keep out any unwanted eyes. He dismantles the kitchen chairs as an excuse to get rid of them, unable to explain just why the feel of the wood against his back makes him feel like screaming. He’s terrified of going back to work. He wants to go back to work. He’s terrified of being alone; alone is all he wants to be.

He has dreams of dying and they’re not as horrible as he’d hope them to be. They’re better than the alternative.

But, dying would mean leaving Maeve alone.

He wakes one night and can’t stand it anymore. It’s just over a month after he’d been taken; only the visible wounds are fading. It’s too much. He can’t do it anymore. He’s not even sure what’s driving this panic, except he’d dreamed of Maeve dressed in black surrounded by a fleet of sinking paper boats, not noticing that the water she’d stood in was slowly creeping up her body. The nightmare fades from his memory; the panic doesn’t.

He wakes her and he’s crying.

“They’d make things better,” he’s babbling, unsure of what he’s crying about but not fighting the words as they come: “You’ll see, Maeve, you’ll see, they made things better.”

Nauseatingly, she knows. “No,” she says firmly, and holds him tight as he falls apart. “No, Spence. That’s an illusion—the drugs didn’t help you in there. They did _nothing_ to help you.”

“They made it stop hurting,” he says in reply, voice muffled by her shoulder against his mouth. “I could make it stop hurting…”

“You’re not going to do that.” She sounds so sure, he’s infuriated and soothed.

“How do you know?” It’s not like she could stop him: he’s alone so often, while she works, while she travels. Nothing is stopping him. Absolutely nothing. Not for the first time, he regrets not taking the drugs from Tobias’ pocket, his hand stalled by the knowledge of Maeve’s disappointment and his own unwillingness to turn her husband into a junkie.

“Because you’re stronger than that,” is her reply, “and because you’re not alone. But, something needs to change.”

He’s expecting her to force him into the therapy she’s been pressuring him about, but she doesn’t. The next day, she comes home early from work with two weeks leave and an announcement: they’re going on the honeymoon they haven’t had time for yet, far from here and far from the trauma that haunts them both.

**April**

The cabin sleeps. It’s a silent honeymoon, which is how they like it. The shack had been loud: Hankel’s whispering and the hissing of the offal and the—

But that’s far away and not relevant to here.

This high in the Rockies, it’s still snowing. A soft, light drift of snow that blankets everything. The cabin they’re in is a perfect mix of them both: Spencer’s esoteric love of everything rustic and Maeve’s longing for more modern comforts. It’s a one room deal that’s forty-percent sunken bed, the wall behind them a window looking out over the sudden drop below. Right now, it’s white. Just, white. Like they’ve fallen off the edge of the world together while resting comfortably in a bed made for just them.

They lock themselves in this tiny, perfect world with nothing but their books and their blankets and the fire crackling across the room, and they heal together. It’s impossible to feel afraid when the view reminds them of how small they are, when the room keeps them huddled tight, when they know they’re everything to each other.

They test their boundaries with each other.

Spencer asks her to tie him up during sex, a whispered request. She’s horrified at first; he talks her into it.

There’s panic, of course. A fast heartbeat, quickened breathing, the muscles in his arms bunching as he fights the desire to buck against the loose binds.

She very nearly safe-words him out.

But all these things calm, as the snow whispers against the windows. He repeats, “He didn’t take this from me, he didn’t take this, he didn’t take _this_ ,” and asks her to keep going. He knows that she understands; this is them fighting to reclaim what he’s lost.

And they both know they’re going to win, because they love each other too much not to.

**May**

Spencer recovers slowly, but he does recover. They return from their honeymoon feeling lazy and spoiled and sore in all the most wonderful places. It’s a feeling very much like being in love: this hurting, gorgeous sense of warmth.

It doesn’t last.

At this point in time, he’s leaning heavily on her to escape leaning on his demons. It’s what a partnership is about—being strong when the other can’t be—so she bears his weight bravely and never complains, even when it means she’s going to work exhausted, even when it means his short temper grates on her. Even when she’s angry herself, because she wants the Spencer of before back—the one without hidden hurts and triggers, the one they’d tried to refind in that silent cabin in the Rocky Mountains. But the snow is gone, and that Spencer is gone too. They’ve been changed by this experience.

They have to learn to live with that.

**June**

Going back to work is just as painful as he’d feared. The cases are more confronting than they’ve ever been, every victim bound and murdered a stark reminder of what could have happened to him if he’d been a little unluckier, if his team had been an iota slower in finding him. It’s hard to concentrate and even harder not to panic, knowing they see it in his eyes and are judging him for it.

It’s Maeve who brings him back to earth.

“Tell them,” she orders him when he admits how horrifyingly hard he’s finding it all. “They know how to help you. That’s not _judgement_ you’re seeing, Spencer—it’s worry. They almost lost you too.”

And he trusts her completely when it comes to things he struggles to understand, like people and the way they still somehow persist in loving him, so he does as she says. He tells them.

He tells Hotch, who isn’t surprised that he’s struggling but _is_ surprised that he came to them for help. He schedules more therapy through the Bureau’s trauma counsellor, which Spencer is wary of but finds to be stunningly helpful once he begins attending.

He tells Gideon, who sits him down and talks him through the worst of his worries. No, he’s not going crazy—Gideon’s known this feeling too. No, he’s not weak—any of them would have reacted as he did. No, it wasn’t his fault—the job is unpredictable, and they’ll do better next time.

He tells JJ, who hugs him tight and tells him once again that she’s sorry, and he tells Emily, who takes him down to the gym and makes him practise disarming an opponent over and over and over again until he can, eight times out of ten, get her gun from her hands. “There,” she says after, when he sweaty and sore and surprised to realise that he hasn’t thought once about the drugs, “now it won’t be you again.”

He tells Morgan, who goes very, very quiet and then tells him how scared he’d been when Spencer had been gone. “It’s not gonna ever happen again,” Morgan says firmly, “I won’t let it.”

Overall, it’s not as hard as it could have been, coming back to work. It’s still hard, but not impossible.

He’s thankful for that.

**July**

Despite the struggle to keep her head above water over the past few months of Spencer’s rehabilitation, she’s still awarded at work for her efforts. The award comes with a small ceremony of appreciation as well as an offer of publication and discussion of her taking on doctorate students in her own lab, and it’s all so exciting that she doesn’t quite know what to do with herself. And she’s stupidly excited to go home and tell Spencer, right until she realises that the day on the email she’s received puts the date down as the week he’s due in Seattle for one of the FBI recruitment drives in the colleges there.

And the job always comes first.

When he gets home that night and finds her already in bed, he’s tired but calmer than he’s been in a long time. For the first time since Hankel, she feels like she can see hints of himself showing through the wary exterior he wears—he’s not excited about his work anymore, not yet, but he no longer looks like he’s considering his own funeral when he talks about it.

“Hey, beautiful,” he murmurs, crawling in behind her and kissing her shoulders. Still dressed with only his gun missing, she rolls to meet him and studies him closely. “How are you?”

She decides to tell him. This is a good thing, this part of their lives coming to fruition—and he needs to share in the good parts of her work just as she shares in the terrible parts of his.

So, she does.

He’s even more excited than she had been, dragging her from the bed and dancing about with her, the life in his face finally returning as he whoops and chants about how clever she is, his beautiful wife. It’s moments like these when she realises how silly she is in her low moments, worrying about whether or not she’s loved—she clearly is and doubts that he’ll ever stop doing so.

“I’m going to be there,” he announces to the room, far too loud to be telling just her. “I’ve decided—there’s no way I’m missing this!”

And, he is.

She doesn’t know how he manages it, but when she stands to receive her award and looks back at the crowd, he’s waving at her from the back of the room. To her surprise, there’s a man there with him laughing at his exuberance. When he sees her looking, he beams as proudly as though she’s his own daughter.

It’s very strange, and strangely rewarding.

“Hi, hello, look how amazing you are!” Spencer cries when she walks down to them after and shows him her award.

“Well done, Dr. Reid,” the other man says, introducing himself as Jason Gideon. She knows that name. He’s the man who introduced Spencer to profiling, the one member of his team she’s never met.

“We stayed for this—we’ll have to drive through the night, but I was determined,” Spencer whispers to her, smiling a secret smile just for her. “For some reason, Gideon backed me up on this.”

Maeve looks at him, the intense man who’s changed hers and Spencer’s lives so much. “I think he knows the importance of the little moments,” she says, just as softly.

After all, it was one meeting with him that brought them here: she’s as thankful as she is sorry.

**August**

They go to New Orleans for a case, a year after Katrina had ransacked it, and he stays behind after it’s all done in order to find a friend.

Ethan hasn’t changed that much at all. The years have added a little weight to him and removed some of his brightness, but his eyes are still as kind and his smile is just as quick. It’s not like when they were at college, but it’s something new and just as good: a genuine adult friendship not based around murders or work, something Spencer treasures.

They talk about everything, about Maeve and about Maurice and about the years yet to come. They talk about the past. They talk about their hopes and their futures.

They talk about Hankel. About the drugs and the cravings and how close Spencer had come to disaster.

“I don’t know what would have happened without Maeve,” Spencer admits, seeing Ethan study him closely. “I don’t think I would have had the strength to… well.” He leaves that unsaid but feels his hands tremble on the glass he’s holding.

“You’re stronger than you give yourself credit for,” Ethan replies simply. “You always have been.”

“How do you know?”

And Ethan laughs, leaning forward with his glass tipped precariously: “Trust me,” he says, “after all, who ran and who stayed?”

Spencer isn’t sure if he’s referring to the Academy, or the time they were mugged, and he says, “Would you have given in?”

All Ethan says is, “Yes.”

**September**

She has a week off in September while the labs undergo a routine inspection entailing the use of most of the equipment, and she can’t decide what she wants to do with all that free time. The obvious answer would be to spend it with her husband, but he’s back at work and, even if he wasn’t, he tells her she should spend it doing something for _her_. In the end, she decides to stay at home and do nothing but read.

This isn’t how it plays out.

She comes home from work on her last day to find that Spencer’s been called into work, but he’s left her bags packed on the bed and tickets sitting beside them. It’s a weekend trip away with her friends that they’ve organised without telling her, and she’s so furiously happy with Spencer for helping them do so that she’s not sure if she wants to hug him or stamp her foot at him. In the end, she decides that it’s just because she’s overwhelmed at the thoughtfulness put into this gift that she’s so mad about it, and her one regret is that she leaves before he comes home.

It’s an amazing weekend. They learn to scuba-dive and a sea turtle swims so close to her that, if she hadn’t been so shocked, she could have brushed its shell with her toes, and they do nothing but drink strange, fruity punches and stay up far too late for the entire weekend. They talk about life and love and what’s to come, and only once is she brought up short when Carly asks her when she plans on giving them baby geniuses to spoil from afar. All she can do is shrug, because they’re far too busy to be thinking about that anytime soon and, besides, she doesn’t know if she can spare the time from work.

She goes home sunburned and relaxed, finally sure that life is working out, and wildly excited to tell Spencer all about it. But the apartment is silent, despite his keys on the hook, and the bedroom is empty.

She finds him asleep on the couch, cuddled up in a ball with a pillow hugged tight to his chest and his go-bag as a pillow. Laughing and deliriously in love with this strange man, she finds a spot to nestle in close and curls up beside him, asleep in minutes despite her sunburned arms and the way her ass hangs off the edge of the couch.

**October**

Their first wedding anniversary is spent hundreds of miles apart, him in a hotel room with Morgan investigating a serial arsonist, her at a conference in New York giving a speech on her research in neurobiology. In a short break between rushing around precincts, Spencer finds himself sitting on his bed in the hotel room watching her speech on his phone propped against the lamp.

Morgan watches too, commenting once that he has no idea what she’s talking about but avidly interested anyway. “She’s brilliant,” he says finally, as the applause dies down and Maeve begins to take questions, her cheeks bright red but managing to answer the queries with minimal social awkwardness. “You must be proud.”

“I am,” Spencer says quietly, despite his emotions being a muddle of pride and worry. Morgan looks at him, eyebrows lifting, and he curses that he’s surrounded by so many bright minds. “I just… I don’t know. Look at her—she’s the smartest person in most rooms that she’s in—”

“Even yours?” Morgan teases gently, which Spencer could argue _yes_ but won’t, because he’s trying to make a point.

“—and she’s _using_ that intelligence,” he finishes grimly. “While I’m…”

“Ah,” says Morgan. “Working alongside mere mortals, solving an endless series of crimes instead of, I don’t know, devising some kind of system to cure psychopathy.”

“Yeah, I guess,” Spencer admits, deciding not to be pedantic about the details. “She’s excelling in her field. I’m a…”

“Field agent with the FBI.” Morgan scrubs at his face with his hand, expression unreadable. “Look, man, I don’t know what it’s like having a brain like yours, none of us do. Even Hotch is a low-key genius and he doesn’t have what you’ve got. But you’re not wasted here. Next time we solve a case, save a life, remember that we wouldn’t have done it without you.”

“Yes, you would have,” Spencer argues. He’s not integral here—he’s not integral _anywhere,_ not in the way Maeve is. “You’d still save lives without me.”

“Not as many,” replies Morgan. “Not as fast.”

**November**

She comes home to find Spencer playing chess alone with a chessboard she doesn’t recognise. For a second, she smiles, right until she realises that he’s drunk and morose, putting the white king in check and then shoving the board from the table and dropping his head into his arms.

“What happened?” she asks him, putting her bag and keys down and taking a seat beside him.

And he tells her.

His job has claimed another soul. Jason Gideon is gone. Leaving in the night with nothing to remember him by except a chessboard and a letter that she reads and hates him a little for. It’s not enough. Oh, she understands his pain—just look at how Spencer had struggled earlier this year and how much she would not have blamed him if he’d given up and walked away from it all—but even if he’s hurting, that doesn’t mean dropping his family along with his work.

“I’m sorry, Spence,” she says honestly.

All he says in response, his breath whisky-strong and burning her nose a little, is, “What’s it matter, everyone leaves.”

When he comes to bed that night, only somewhat sober, they have sex because he pushes for it. She’s not sure it’s a good idea, but he’s drunk and miserable and clearly looking for something. It’s not good for either of them.

They give up halfway through and neither sleeps at all.

**December**

New Year’s sees them drunk and silly, re-enacting their youths as Emily goads them all into drinking far more than they would have without her. They’re all desperate to relax, to forget everything that’s happened this year, and they’re more than successful.

By the time the clock ticks to midnight, the party has spilled outside of Morgan’s home. They’re spread out around the lawn in loose groups of revellers, Emily and Morgan mock wrestling, Garcia telling Morgan’s friends all the stories of him she can remember, Hotch standing quietly alone watching the sky with a beer bottle in hand.

But Spencer doesn’t see any of this until after because, as the pop and whistle of fireworks begins to sound over the city, he’s cuddled up to Maeve with their backs against a poplar tree, whispering to each other giddy memories of meeting each other in between kissing each other fiercely. It’s a celebration of another year, a celebration of the years that have passed before, and—most of all—it’s a celebration of surviving.

And a declaration that they’ll continue to do so.


	7. 2009

**January**

It’s not that he’s struggling to perform, it’s just that the outcome of a successful performance right now keeps jumping up in his mind and making it impossible to focus on the task at hand. Which wouldn’t really matter, since usually he could just refocus himself on what was pertinent, except that refocusing right now involves him standing over a naked Maeve with his hands hanging awkwardly by his sides as she looks up at his ‘failure to perform’ with one eyebrow quirked.

“Are you okay?” she asks him, and he squeaks, “Peachy.”

It takes him a second, but he manages to remember how to engage in sex with his wife of three and some years, and he reaches for her leg. Touching, yes, touching. Sensual touching. He can do this. He finds her knee, traces his finger around it, and then very vividly imagines someone handing him a baby.

“Eek,” he says.

Maeve sighs, sitting up and wiggling down from the pillow they’ve got her hips tucked up on. “What’s _wrong_?” she asks with infinite patience. “We’re not doing anything we haven’t done a thousand times before, Spencer.”

“Yes, but,” he begins, and falters. “What if…” It sounds ridiculous in his head, which means it will be even more stupid if he says it out loud. And, then, he says it anyway. “What if I get you… pregnant?”

She blinks. Stares. Nods slowly. “Yes,” she says, “that’s rather the point, don’t you think?”

Well.

She’s not wrong.

“There’s nothing stopping it happening,” he continues, just so she’s _sure_ that this is what they want to do. “Like, I’m, you’re…” He stops, and looks down at himself, frowning.

There’s one thing stopping it happening.

“Do you want to take a break and try again when you’re more, um…” He’s thankful for the pause, but wishes she’d stopped there: “…more excited?”

“No,” he says firmly, because he _can_ do this. He just has to think sexy thoughts, like about how she feels around him and her eyes when she’s aroused and the slim suspicion that he won’t get as much attention once there’s a tiny person crying and being sticky and expelling waste and— “…Do you want to just watch TV?”

It’s been three months since they’d decided to do this, surely something has to start clicking for him soon.

Right?

**February**

When she has clothes on, he’s as excited about a baby as she is. It’s when they’re naked and in the actual act that not every part of him seems to be entirely on board. Only once does she make the mistake of saying, “Maybe we’re not ready,” and having to deal with him being woeful about it for the next two days, culminating in finding him staring glumly at an advert in the newspaper for children’s braces.

She’s decided to pounce while his defences are down.

It takes a day of prep. A weekend off with them both: they go shopping and she ‘accidentally’ ambles into the baby section, waiting until she hears him squeak over the tiny socks before moving on. After that, lunch at a park with parents playing with their kids on the playground nearby. The entire time, she feigns disinterest, discussing her plans for a possible book in the future, advancing her career, things she could do if she were to take a short break from the lab…

It’s easy enough to wear him out, with a nature hike just out of DC that she’s been threatening him with for months and has to coax him into by promising to stop by his favourite second-hand bookstore on the way home. By then, they’re both bone tired and physically drained, although he finds one last burst of energy in order to buy a giant set of children’s encyclopedias of the world, which is probably evidence that he’s finally moving past the bottleneck he’s in.

Home for showers, dinner, and bed. She waits for him to fall asleep over the book he’s reading, waits a little more until he does what he always does and slips awake, just a little, to search for her. Sleepy pawing at her side as he nuzzles into her, head on her thigh and hand curled around her leg. “I love you,” he mumbles, and she slides down properly into the bed and lets him snuggle close.

“Love you too,” she says, finding the spot on his shoulder that’s always tense and rubbing it in slow, affectionate circles. “I love our family, Spence. You and Maury…”

“Mm,” he rumbles, eyes barely open. “I love them too.”

“Our baby,” she probes slightly, and sees him smile.

“That too,” is the sleepy reply. He’s quiet for long enough after that that she thinks he’s fallen asleep, even as she sneaks a hand under the blankets and starts stroking long lines up the side of his body, coaxing him towards her. “We’re going to have a baby…” he says suddenly, eyes snapping open and looking worried.

She kisses him until the worry vanishes. “We’re going to have a _child_ ,” she stresses, pushing his brain past the physical act. “A new family member, Spence. You’ll be a dad… someone’s daddy. That’s what we want, isn’t it?”

“Yes.” He blinks, more alert, and only now noticing that her hands are drifting lower in an effort to arouse him. His mouth shifts into a smile and he arches into that touch, relaxed, finally. “I don’t… are we ready?”

“I think we are.” She does. They’re so ready. _He’s_ ready. “I want to add to our family. A smart, handsome, wonderful little addition.”

“Our family,” he repeats, gleeful, and kisses her back. “A _happy,_ loved addition.” And, just like that, his brain has bumped past the bottleneck of ‘baby’ and leapt straight onto tiny socks and bedtime stories and small arms around his neck. Maeve smiles, loving this man and loving this life.

**March**

March brings a shadow down unto the team. Spencer should have known something was coming: things had been going so, so well up until this point, there had to be a catch.

The catch, this time, is George Foyet.

The Reaper.

The case is grim and, for the first time, they see cracks beginning to show on Hotch. Parts of him that he’s never shown before, the anger and the frustration at their best not being good enough, begin to become apparent. The team is tense and that tension bleeds out into their home lives.

The case goes wrong. The Reaper gets away.

Hotch isn’t okay.

For one of the very few times since their marriage has begun, Spencer doesn’t go home and talk to Maeve about the broad-strokes of this case. It’s never been something they’ve done, sharing the gritty, often gory, details of his work, but ever since Hankel there’s been a comfort for both in them in ensuring that they’re both on the same page about certain aspects of the job. Maeve delights in the wins. He tells her about the lives saved, the times the team were there for each other, astounding leaps in logic they’ve taken.

There are no wins here. He goes home, and he’s silent.

She knows enough by now about the nature of his work, and she doesn’t ask.

**April**

It’s positive. She should wait until he comes home, until he can be there to see it for himself, but she can’t. That could be days away, a week even, and she can’t—she _can’t_.

First, she has to practise what she’ll say.

“I’m pregnant,” she tells Maurice, who looks thoroughly unimpressed. “I’m pregnant!” she tells the clock on the wall, counting down the hours and minutes until Spencer comes home to _them_. “I’m pregnant!” she tells the fridge, the photos on the mantle, the books on the shelves, the room they’ll turn into a nursery.

“I’m pregnant,” she tells Spencer, as soon as he answers the phone. There’s silence on the other end for a second, a short exhale of breath. A sharp inhale.

“Oh my god, it worked,” he says finally, sounding dazed, tired, hoarse. “Oh my god. Oh my god.”

“Is that all you’re going to say?” she asks, and laughs, spinning in a short circle around the living room because, it’s happening, it’s happening—eight months of planning and hoping and trying and it’s really happening—

There are sirens on the other end of the line, Spencer hissing. “I have to go,” he says, his tone torn between excitement and distraction, her feet stilling their wild dance. “Maeve, god, this… _god_.”

“It’s okay,” she reassures him. “We’ll both still be here when you get back.”

“Both,” he whispers, and then he’s gone. Off to save lives, one monster at a time.

And when he does come home to her, jet-lagged and wearing three-day old clothes that are rumpled from his go-bag, he brings with him a ridiculous plush bird with aqua feet and a sailor hat. The bird—a blue-footed booby, she’s informed—is presented to her as their first acquisition for the new nursery.

They name him Boris. He sits proudly atop the shelf in their room now, reminding them daily that there’s a new life coming.

**May**

May brings a blow. By now, they’re used to this. One step forward—a _baby,_ a child that’s him and Maeve all beautifully combined into one singular, separate being—two steps back—anthrax.

Even in Hankel’s shack, he’s never feared death like this. Never feared the loss of everything. He begs them: don’t tell Maeve he’s dying. Spare her for as long as possible. There’s a wild, insane voice in his head whispering that maybe, somehow, they can hide it for the next eight months—anything to stop this hurting their child. Anything to stop it hurting them. He knows he’s being irrational. He knows that they know this too. There’s a sadness in Hotch’s eyes that guts him.

And then he decides: he won’t die here. He won’t die today.

He won’t hurt her like that.

But there’s a part of him that’s pessimistic, that fears the ‘what if’ of the anthrax destroying him. They haven’t told Maeve what’s happening—and they won’t, not until he’s in the hospital and it’s taken out of his control—but he does make one concession to the possibility of dying.

He asks Garcia to record for him a message to his child.

He apologises for not being there. For not being able to see them grow. For failing them so completely before they’re even born. He tells them he hopes they’ll be happy. He tells them to always tell their mom that they love her.

And, before he’s done saying everything he desperately needs to say, he’s crying and coughing and choking too hard to say anything more at all.

It’s not enough.

It will never be enough.

**June**

They have The Talk they should have had years before, but continued putting off over and over again because it wouldn’t _really_ ever happen, would it? But, it could, and would, and keeps threatening to. His breathing is rattling beside her. The sky outside is painted with orange and pink and the vaguest hint of city-smog grey. They’re watching that sky, the reflection of the moon and a promise of stars, when he says, “This is what you have to do if I die.”

Continue on, he tells her. There’s a child in her womb that needs both of them, but one at the least, and she wants to ask him why all those other lives he saves are more important to him than the two lives waiting for him to come home every night. Why do those strangers matter more than her, more than their child, more than the rings on their fingers?

But she knows the answer.

They’ll always matter, not more, but equally. Spencer doesn’t place values on lives: if he could save one, just one, he’d strike the match himself and grieve them as he burned.

This is what you have to do if I die, he says, and lays out in explicit detail the money he’s setting aside to take care of them. He’s paid for his cremation already, not trusting in the Bureau to do it, and his will is sitting inside ready to be witnessed and signed off on. This is what you have to do, he says, and tells her to make sure their child is loved enough for both of them, even if it’s just her alone. To tell them stories, to read them books, to show them how lovely language can be.

It’s so selfish of him, she hates him for it. Hates him as fiercely as when she’d gotten the call last month: _anthrax._ Of all things. She’ll never understand why he insists upon dying.

She hates him.

She loves him.

On this day, they talk about losing him.

Here’s what you have to do, he says: live.

**July**

He goes to Hotch because, if there’s anyone on the team that he can bear to ask this of, it’s him. It’s a formal meeting, requested politely days before, and he knows this professionalism is concerning his boss.

But he needs it to be professional, because he’ll break otherwise.

That lasts all of ten seconds.

“What happens to them if I’m killed?” he blurts out, and then immediately regrets it when Hotch’s eyes go wide and any semblance of formal goes out the window.

“Spencer,” begins Hotch, and just like that they’re not boss and subordinate, but two worried fathers, “you know the likelihood of you dying in the field is low. What we do is dangerous, but it’s been years since…”

“Boston,” says Spencer.

The Fisher King. Frank. Hankel. The anthrax.

It’s not theoretical anymore, and they both know it.

Spencer takes a deep, steadying breath and asks the question he doesn’t want to ask; he’s not ready for the answer: “Should I leave?”

Hotch is quiet. “I can’t answer that,” he says finally, so Spencer adjusts his line of questioning.

“Why haven’t you left?” he asks, even quieter, because Hotch has a son and a wife that’s an ex because of this job. “Don’t you worry you’ll…” He doesn’t know how to end that.

The reply is gentle, but firm. “Because I need to do this job,” Hotch says without hesitation or uncertainty. “It’s as much a part of me as my son is. I know that, if I walk away, I’ll be haunted forever by every case I could have taken, but didn’t, every person I could have saved.”

“Isn’t that fundamentally selfish?”

Hotch nods. “Yes,” he replies, confirming Spencer’s suspicions. “But it’s the choice I’ve made regardless. And it’s a choice you need to make as well, independently of my influence. I can never guarantee your safety, despite how horrifying it is to me to consider failing you in that way.”

There’s a weary silence between them. Spencer wonders, but doesn’t ask, what Hotch is thinking of.

There’s one last question he needs to ask.

“What precautions can I take, to make sure if it happens, that it doesn’t cripple them?”

And Hotch, with something unknowable in his eyes—because he’s thought this through, as Spencer knew he would have—tells him.

**August**

Work winds down for her in the later months, her mobility beginning to become restricted adding to the provisions she already has to take for chemical handling. It’s in this time that she begins to take much more time with her two doctorate candidates, preparing them for entry into the final stages before defending. One of them concerns her: Diane’s work is meticulous, but her thesis is absurd and, despite Maeve having instructed her multiple times to revisit it, she refuses to engage correctly with the work. By this point, Maeve is beginning to suspect that she’s going to have to stall her out of her post-grad in order to focus on getting Peter through, especially if Diane continues to be stubborn. Conscious cell death?

It’s absurd. She mentions it to Spencer that night and he’s confused, if distracted, as he has been for months. There’s a case haunting them that he’s unwilling to talk about; she allows him his privacy and returns to worrying over what she’s going to have to do.

In the end, she has to decide before she goes on maternity leave: she’ll give Diane one more chance, just one. After all, she’d hate to destroy her dreams.

**September**

He goes a little mad in September, coming home and noticing just how not-quite-as-slender his slender wife suddenly is and then, almost immediately after, realising just how dangerous the world really is. There are sharp corners and power outlets and unsecured bookshelves and Maurice’s sharp bits; the only solution is to immediately attempt to baby-proof the entire world, or at least one small corner of it. DC, he decides. He’ll just baby-proof DC.

In the process he suffers: one torn fingernail, eight new bruises, one knock on the head, three splinters, and almost swallowing a nail. It’s decided, after that, that any more baby-proofing is to be done by Maeve.

It’s also realised that none of them can get into their cupboards any longer.

Babies, Spencer has discovered, might be a little more trouble than he suspects.

**October**

They celebrate their fourth wedding anniversary at the park where they were married, her giving Spencer a fruit basket and a series of Halloween socks that glow in the dark. He gives her a hat shaped like a pumpkin.

It’s a picnic and a nap on the shore of the lake, Maeve watching the leaves fall from the trees and Spencer keenly planning his ‘tricks’ for that night. The air is crisp, the best kind of autumn weather, and she’s definitely not small anymore. While they lay there, she traces a hand across her stomach and wonders about the person inside: will they love Halloween as much as their parents do? They’ve kept the sex a secret, both happy either way, but Maeve secretly dreams of a little boy with his father’s eyes, just as much as she knows that Spencer wants a baby girl to cherish. Why else would he have asked her to teach him how to braid hair, saying he’d asked JJ first and gotten laughed out of the bullpen?

When the afternoon is almost over, drifting into an icy autumn twilight, they both turn their napkins into boats, three of them. One for him, one for her, and a small one for their waiting child. They don’t float them; they’ll sink immediately.

But Maeve loves them all the same, no matter how fragile they are.

**November**

Maeve sits quietly with him in the hospital, and he can tell she’s been crying.

“Hotch is worse off than I am,” he says doggedly. “I was never in real danger, Maeve.”

“You were shot,” is her dangerously quiet reply. “Your knee is a mess. They don’t know if they can fix it…”

“Hotch is worse off,” Spencer repeats. He needs her to understand this; he knows now, has known since the anthrax, he won’t die so easily. Not with a family to care for. If Hotch can survive being stabbed over thirty times, he can survive a little bullet.

And Hotch is going to be fine.

Even if Haley isn’t.

And that’s an outcome he’s never considered before now: what if it’s not him who’s put in danger?

“Will you ever consider a different career?” she whispers.

He says, “Maybe.”

**December**

Sebastian Spencer Reid is born on Christmas Eve. He’s handed back to them in a bright red stocking, bobble-hat perched festively atop his squashed little face.

Maeve sees the stocking and the hat and is gone immediately; she’d be embarrassed about the soft, silly noises slipping from her mouth right now, like she’s been overcome by emotion at the sight of some painfully adorable small animal, but she’s—putting it politely—still high as balls on the pain medication they’d given her to get her through a thirteen-hour labour. She can’t do anything but cry, still staring at that silly hat and wondering if they’ve given her an elf instead of a baby and just how gleeful her husband is going to be if that turns out to be what’s actually happened.

Spencer sees the stocking and the hat and immediately declares that they’ll be letting Sebby pick his own birthday, once he’s old enough to, or else he’ll never have a birthday party he’ll be pleased with.

Sebastian, with no real care for how strange his parents are, sleeps peacefully.


	8. 2010

**January**

If he’s clumsy on two legs, he’s worse on four, and Emily is endlessly amused by how often he falls over on his new crutches—JJ, in contrast, frets endlessly that he’s going to tear something in his delicately reconstructed kneecap, despite the thick bandaging that’s then covered once more by an unwieldy brace. But he’s determined to be back at work as soon as he’s allowed—earning strange looks from everyone, who not so subtly hint that maybe he should take the extra time off he’s allotted to stay at home with his wife and newborn son.

And he wants to, he really, really does. The one thing he regrets more than anything is that he’s not there giving his son the best start in life, multitudes of attachment studies rushing through his brain at the thought of whether he should be here or there. The only consolation he takes is that he’s strictly nine-till-five, grounded and chained to a desk, so he’s home in time for dinner and Sebby’s bath and bed every night.

But he has to be here. Hotch’s office door is closed. The man is too brutalised by Foyet’s knife to return just yet. Spencer has gone to see him, recuperating at home; that’s why he’s here.

He’s here, because Hotch can’t be, and Foyet is after Hotch’s family. His wife, even ex, his son. Spencer goes home and he looks at his child, barely aware of the wonderous world he’s begun in yet, and feels a burning, righteous fury at the idea that someone, anyone, would dare to take him out of it. He couldn’t bear it; the loss would destroy him.

He has to be here, because Hotch can’t be. They have to find Foyet, before it’s too late.

He tells Emily he’s fine, despite knowing she doesn’t believe him; endures Morgan’s teasing about fatherhood, sensing that the man is looking at what he has and longing just a little bit; lies to Garcia, because she can’t know he’s struggling; and he leans on JJ because she’s always known him the best.

“I’m so tired,” he tells her, hiding in the conference room with the hated crutches propped against the table next to him. “Seb barely sleeps, he barely eats. I lost my keys for hours the other day—couldn’t remember where I put the things even though I only ever leave them in the one place. Locked myself out and had to call for Maeve to let me in, then found them sitting there all along. My brain is fried, Maeve is exhausted, and I’m trying to help, but I’m _here_.”

“You don’t have to be,” JJ offers. The casefiles are spread out around them, the details of the Reaper’s crimes. She’s been ferrying him coffee and food all day, spotting with an eagle-eyed intensity the shadows under his eyes and his ruffled clothes, keeping him going when he’d rather be home napping with his baby on his chest. “Go home, Spence. We can find him without you.”

 _Not as fast_ , he thinks, because this is no time to be modest. _Maybe not fast enough for Jack and Haley._

“I’ll be fine,” he says and hopes it’s true.

For Hotch’s sake, it has to be.

**February**

She can’t bear to stay at Haley’s funeral, she just can’t bear it. She suspects that she’d feel the same about the funerals of any of Spencer’s colleagues, too haunted by the image of a coffin with Spencer’s likeness in it. A state funeral with all the bells and whistles to try and spin the pretty lie that her husband died for the country or the peace or some bullshit like it that she doesn’t subscribe to and wishes he wouldn’t either.

But that’s not fair.

Except it is, a little, because Haley Hotchner had never signed up to die at the end of a madman’s knife, and Maeve hasn’t either.

She bears the service grimly, side-by-side with the stiff-shouldered Spencer with Sebby in his arms. They’d been reluctant to bring him, the weather bitter today and the service long, but Hotch had requested that Haley had died for her family—she’d have wanted families to be together to grieve her. And, remarkably, Sebby is quiet, watching around with his big, brown eyes seeing nothing really except movement and colour at this point in development, his wild, red hair covered by a thick, woolly hat. He’s a mittened, coated, swaddled blob of a baby, with really only his eyes visible, and it’s a heartbreaking reminder that there’s still life after death.

Jack, standing by his dad as they bury his mom, is another heartbreaking reminder. Maeve looks at him and holds Sebby close, silently promising him that they will never, ever die and leave him. Not ever.

The gravesite is freezing. The coffin takes too long to dip below the earth. Jack doesn’t cry. Hotch cries too much. It’s unsettling and dismaying and there’s a keen-eyed grief in everyone as they tell Hotch they’re sorry for his loss that Maeve can read into: they’re sorry for his loss, because they’re surprised he’s not the dead one.

It cuts too close to home.

At the reception, she slips away. Finds a room that’s private and closed-off and struggles to feed Sebby with her stupid black dress fighting her every step of the way. When she’s done, she stays there a bit longer, because no one has come looking yet and she can’t stand the grief out there. She’s sure that someone will find them eventually, playing a game with Sebby to make him giggle instead of fret that it’s past his naptime.

Someone does, but not who she expects.

“Is he sad too?” asks a little voice, and she looks up and has to remind herself how to breathe. It’s Jack Hotchner, little Jack Hotchner, and he’s dressed in a suit and tie that’s a mirror of his daddy’s. It’s a harsh juxtaposition of the reality of adulthood and death crashing into his young face and reddened eyes, and she loves him so fiercely in that moment just because he’s hurting.

“He’s sleepy,” she says awkwardly, not really sure how to talk to another person’s child. “He’s not quite sure what’s going on.”

Jack is quiet for a moment, closing the door behind him and slipping over to kneel by her, eyes on Sebby and without a care for the knees of his suit. “I don’t really know what’s going on either,” he tells Sebby, like it’s a secret, and very quietly begins to cry.

Maeve doesn’t know what to do. “Would you like a hug?” she offers. Jack shakes his head, then pauses.

“Can I hold him?” he asks instead.

When Hotch and Spencer come looking for them, Spencer because he’s been called away by work and Hotch because he’s clinging to his son, they find Jack sitting quietly with Sebby asleep in his lap, Maeve beside them. When Spencer kisses her and kisses Seb and leaves them both there, Hotch sits with them. They don’t say much. There’s not much to say.

They’re always going to be the ones left behind.

**March**

Another bout of surgery on his knee leaves him stuck at home for three weeks in March, a forced respite from work that’s sorely needed now the ferocity of the hunt for Foyet is over, leaving them all just tired and sad at the insurmountable weight of their failures. There’s plenty to be glum about: Haley is dead, Hotch is broken, Spencer’s knee isn’t healing how it should be. This latest round of surgery ended with the news that he’ll be on crutches for the next eight months at least, out of the field and left behind every time his team fly out. He can help from there still, just the same as Garcia can, but it’s strangely upsetting nonetheless.

Maeve doesn’t seem to understand his frustration. Today he’s managed to lever himself onto the living room floor, lying prone with Sebby on his blanket beside him, both as restlessly immobile as the other. Sebby kicks and grabs at the toy suspended over his head, vibrantly black and white and easy for his undeveloped vision to focus on. Every time he smacks the camel-shaped squeaker, he smiles and kicks some more, making soft huffing noises of excitement. Maurice watches this avidly, his fascination for the tiny human that’s invaded his territory growing by the day. Wherever the baby is, the cat isn’t far away, and Spencer is once again regulated to ‘man who delivers the food, sometimes’. In the eyes of Maurice, Spencer is about as loved as the fridge.

That bothers him more than it should.

“It’s so strange,” Maeve is saying, bustling around him like she’s full of life while his is on hold, “the bills should have come in by now, but they haven’t. I’ll have to call the company. Why didn’t we put on the calendar that Sebby had his paediatrician’s appointment this week? I can’t believe we missed it. They said they sent a letter…”

“We didn’t get a letter,” Spencer says absently, trying to pet the cat and almost getting bitten as Maurice rumbles and rolls onto his belly to tempt fate, yellow eyes narrowed.

“They said they sent one. Gosh, I don’t know. Why don’t they use email—or text? Everywhere texts now, why can’t they?”

“Hmph,” is Spencer’s reply. Technology pervades his life, and he resents it. Maeve rolls her eyes at him, and he studies her as she walks away, the weight she hasn’t quite lost from Seb that sits so nicely around her waist and hips, the confident bounce to her gait. He’s reminded that he loves her.

He thinks of Haley again and shivers.

“Are you listening, Spencer?” Maeve bobs into view overhead and frowns. “I know my life here isn’t as exciting as yours at work, but while you’re here you could at least _pretend_ I’m not stuck in domestic hell.”

He blinks. “Do you hate it at home so much?”

“No.” She looks away, mouth twisting, then looks at Sebby and smiles. “Not really. It’s gotten better recently…”

He knows she’s referring to him being there and feels guilty again for wishing he was anywhere but, resolving that from now on he’ll be present in his home instead of mentally walking the halls of the FBI.

“We’ll buy a lock for the letterbox,” he says, and sees her brighten immediately.

**April**

Spencer goes back to work in April and it’s strange not to have him around, which just shows how quickly she adjusts to his presence even when it’s nothing she’s ever really had before. The apartment feels weird without him in the aftermath of him being there constantly. She keeps finding things that aren’t where she normally puts them, or failing to find other things at all.

It’s also the month when the phone calls start. They’re just hang-ups, nothing too strange or annoying, just minor irritants. But they only ever come when she’s alone, so she feels a little crazy telling Spencer about them that night at dinner. She tells her mom, who tells her she’s being paranoid, and tells her dad, who laughs and complains about ‘kids with too much time’, and none of it really helps. Whether they’re benign or not, she feels very, very alone on the nights when Spencer stays late at work, and almost glad that the bullet in his knee means he’s always home before midnight.

One morning, Spencer is running late—her fault. They’d woken early together at Sebby’s usual feeding time to find that he was sleeping through it and had taken advantage of that to spend some time alone together, getting lost in each other for an innumerable amount of time. When they’d emerged from the room, ruffled and sated and so gloriously happy, it was to the realisation that their alarm clock had failed and the light outside was high.

Because of this, he’s there when the landline rings. She’s in the hall, naked and torn between darting into the shower or going to the quietly muttering Sebby in his crib, and sees Spencer pick up the phone.

“Reid residence,” he says, and doesn’t immediately put the phone down. She pauses, watching him. “Hello? Is someone there?” Eventually, he puts it down, shrugging when she queries who it was. “No one said anything.”

“Just breathed?” she teases, and he laughs wryly but doesn’t say no.

For some reason, that terrifies her.

When he leaves that day, she almost wants to beg him not to. To stay with her, and that silent phone. But she doesn’t.

When he’s gone, it rings again.

Instead of answering it, she feeds Maurice, gives him a new toy from the box they keep out of reach for his belongings—alternating toys stops him trying to eat Sebby’s, they’ve found—and puts Seb in his stroller. As she leaves, it’s still ringing, and she resolutely closes the door. A quiet walk around the apartment complex is just what she needs. And it’s fine, it’s wonderful, she’s even feeling settled, until she bumps into the elderly lady from upstairs.

“Oh what a darling this one is,” the woman says, introducing herself as Laurie. She’s a lovely woman in a dress and shawl, nails painted so clumsily and with such awkward bunny-stickers wedged on top that Maeve guesses an eager grandchild had done her the favour. “Oh my, take a look at this _hair_. Did you say you were from 2D? That lovely young FBI agent’s?”

“Yes,” Maeve says, leaning on the stroller and smiling as the lady pats at Sebby’s wild red curls, earning herself a damp giggle from the baby as he tries to touch her hand with his toes. “He has my hair, I’m afraid. Mine was _vividly_ red when I was little, I used to get so terribly teased.”

Laurie looks startled. “Oh, dear,” she says, a confused look darting across her kind features. “Oh, I thought you must be the babysitter. You’re his mother?”

Maeve tenses. Sure, they’re busy and rarely home, but they’ve lived here for years—the neighbours recognise Spencer but not her? “I’m Dr. Reid’s wife,” she prompts, forcing a smile. Sebby keeps giggling. “The young FBI agent?”

“Huh,” says Laurie, frowning. “Only, I thought we’d met Dr. Reid’s wife. Never mind, we must have been mistaken. Perhaps she was just visiting. Anyway, must go! Pop in for coffee sometime and bring this lovely one—we should get to know each other.”

And she’s gone, leaving Maeve feeling distinctly unsettled. Walk ruined, she returns home and unhooks the phone.

**May**

Emily corners him at work one day, luring him out of the building with a promise of buying him a chocolate muffin for lunch and then plonking him on a park bench and holding his crutches out of reach so he can’t escape while she grills him about how ‘stressed’ he’s been looking lately.

“I have a baby at home,” he tries, and she laughs at him.

“The only time you _don’t_ look stressed is when you talk about him,” she says. “Tell me what’s bothering you, really.”

So, he does. The phone calls and the weird stares his neighbours had given him and Maeve when they’d gone around to sort out the mix-up between Maeve and someone else. Maeve had admitted the whole thing had left her feeling out of place in the apartment building, avoiding taking Sebby down to the complex’s playground from a nervous kind of feeling that people were staring at her like she was some ‘other’ woman.

Emily, because she’s always been able to look right into the heart of things, doesn’t laugh.

He finishes with Haley. “I look at Hotch and how much he struggles now, with her gone, and I’m scared of that,” he admits. “What if it isn’t nothing? What if it’s someone after me, trying to use her to get to me? How do I keep her safe?”

Emily doesn’t answer but, when they knock off that night, she offers to drive him home.

“Is Maeve worried about this?” she asks. Spencer nods. “And you’re pretending not to be, so you don’t stress her more?”

He smiles tightly. “Wouldn’t you?”

Emily just nods and tells him to send her out for something when they get home. He picks take-away—ordering pizza and looking pointedly at his crutches when Maeve asks if he’s going to get it. As soon as the door closes behind her, with Sebby on his good knee trying to chew on his thumb, he watches as Emily gets to work. She checks the windows—inside and out—, the fire escape, the front door. He watches as she tries to call-back the last number that had called them, the phone ringing out. Then, before Maeve is home, she tells him to stay with Seb and vanishes downstairs.

By the time she returns, dinner is there. Over the pizza, she’s chatty and bright, keeping the conversation firmly on things that her and Maeve have in common. Spencer relaxes, just a little, at this hint of normality. Emily over for dinner isn’t unusual and her and Maeve get along well. She’s awkward with Sebastian, but fond, and this is fine. If something was wrong, she’d have told him, somehow.

But, on her way out the door, she asks him to walk her down. Crutches clunking as he hobbles to the hated elevator with her, she waits until they’re in before giving him a card from her handbag.

“It’s the company I go through for my security system,” she tells him. “They’re great. Call them tomorrow and organise to get an alarm system installed. Get them to change your locks too, ASAP.”

In that moment, his heart stalls out a little. “Why?” he asks, voice hoarse.

There’s a painful moment before she answers, her eyes locked on his. “Your supervisor says he’s cut spare keys for five apartments this year. One of them was yours—he said Maeve signed off on it.”

Spencer shakes his head, blood rushing.

They’ve never ordered a spare key through the supervisor.

“I didn’t think so,” Emily says as the elevator doors open. “Get your locks changed. And talk to Hotch.”

He does both. Three days later, Morgan comes around and helps him check for easy break-in points. The fire-escape is outside Sebby’s nursery, something that hadn’t ever bothered him before now. Maeve raises her eyebrows but says nothing as they switch the nursery with his office, only making a wry comment about the painted boats on the walls and wondering out loud why they’re replacing the glass on the window. Neither of them tell her it’s shatter-proof glass, twice as strong as that in the other windows.

Hotch tells him to keep an eye out for anything else strange and, tensely, he waits to see if anything further happens. But the phone calls stop, the weirdness fades, and he’s sure it must have just been temporary.

**June**

She’s _stupid_ , so stupid, and doesn’t check that the door is closed behind her when she goes down to do the laundry one day, coming back to the door open and Maurice gone. He’s nowhere to be found, her stupid, ugly, wonderful cat, and by the time Spencer gets home that night, she’s hysterical.

“He’s going to starve,” she sobs as he tries to hug her without dropping his crutches. “He’ll get hit by a car!”

“No, he won’t,” Spencer soothes. “We’ll go looking, together. He’s a tough old thing—the streets didn’t kill him before, they won’t for the short time he’s been out now.”

“But he’s _old_ now,” she sobs, because he _is_ , he is! Grey-muzzled and spoiled and fat and half-blind. He can’t be out there! Not at night!

Spencer just keeps soothing her as she tries to calm Sebby down, the baby sobbing incoherently for his own indiscernible reasons. “What’s wrong with Seb?” he asks.

“I don’t know!” she yells, her guilt over her cat and her inability to keep her son happy and smiling piling onto her and breaking her down. “I don’t know, I just don’t damn well know, Spencer! Why don’t you ask him?”

Spencer eyes her warily, hobbling off to the bedroom to find Sebby’s favourite blanket and Boris-the-bird, coming back with neither. Another failing on her behalf: she probably left them in the laundry room while her cat was busy getting himself _lost_.

“Alright,” Spencer says. “Let’s go for a walk. Get his food and toy, we’ll call for him.”

“No!” It’s unfair, that she’s screaming at him, but he’s not here, he’s never here, and she’s so furiously angry at that! “You can’t go out there, your damn _knee_.” He’s giving her a startled, puppy-dog look and she hates that too, how he pouts when he thinks he’s in trouble. “You’re never here, Spencer, I needed to go look for Maury hours ago but Sebby wouldn’t stop crying and I couldn’t take him with me and you’re never _here_ helping _us_ , you’re too busy at work trying to solve everyone else’s problems! What about us? What about me, or Seb? Why do we always come last?”

Seb, who starts wailing with gusto now, his face turning purple as he ignores the need to breathe in favour of screaming about how angry he is. And then she’s crying hysterically, curling up on the floor in the middle of the living room and howling along while the cat bowls sit with Maury’s dinner uneaten in the kitchen and Sebby screams along and Spencer stares helplessly. She’s so angry at how _helpless_ she is, how useless, how stupid and weak and—

“This isn’t just about Maury is it?” Spencer asks gently, and she hates fucking _profilers_.

But she tells him.

“Mom has cancer,” she says.

He doesn’t say anything after that, just hugs her until the tears stop coming, because crying isn’t going to fix anything that’s wrong right now.

 

**July**

There are flowers on his desk.

He’s delighted. They’re an eccentric mix of thyme and oxlips, honey-suckle and musk-roses and a single sprig of eglantine. As terrible as he is with flowers, he recognises these—they’re the same flowers he gives to Maeve every year on their anniversary, a reference to her favourite passage from _A Midsummer Night’s Dream_. They have a standing order for them yearly from a local florist. Amongst his teammate’s teasing, he sends Maeve a text thanking her, a little guilty that she must have felt so terrible about their fight that she felt the need to gift him with flowers, complete with a tag that says, _To my dearest husband, can’t wait until you come home_ overtop of a quote. Spencer stares at the quote. Reads it twice.

Stares some more.

_‘All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another.’_

His phone dings. A text from Maeve. Somehow, he already knows what it’s going to say before he opens it.

_> Maeve: I didn’t send you flowers?_

“Reid? You alright, kid?” Morgan is asking through the buzzing in Spencer’s ears.

“I think we’re in trouble,” he says, and puts gloves on before carrying the flowers up to Hotch’s office.

**August**

She says nothing about the worries of their stalker when she visits her mom in August, faking a smile and using make-up to cover the sleepless nights, trusting in the excuse of a new baby to cover what the make-up doesn’t. Her mom isn’t looking much better, the chemo beginning to take it out of her even though her doctors are optimistic that the lump in her breast is beginning to show signs of reducing.

Her dad is another thing, wordlessly taking Sebby outside and spending an hour playing with him on the grass without answering Maeve when she calls out asking if he’d like lunch. Sebby has discovered bugs and is fascinated, letting his grandad put a ladybug on his palm and watching it walk back and forth across.

“He’s a worrier, your father is,” her mom says, watching her husband and grandson out of the kitchen window. “Frets constantly, thinking I’m going to keel over while he’s out for milk or just poof away in the night like a ghost. Honestly, I wish I hadn’t even told him I was ill. He’s going to end up in a grave before I do if he keeps this up.”

Maeve swallows.

She decides not to say anything, reaching for a dishtowel and smiling brightly.

“Don’t worry, Mom,” she says. “We’ll show him that there’s nothing to be scared of.”

**September**

September begins in a panic.

Maeve rings him when he’s about to step onto the jet to fly to Colorado: someone called Seb’s day-care asking to be placed onto his pick-up list. It’s a horrifying feeling and he can’t think for fear for a moment, snapping back into himself to find himself in the passenger seat of his car as Rossi breaks the law getting them there. They stay in DC while the team works the Colorado case, Maeve and Seb sitting restlessly in the conference room with a box of toys while Rossi, Spencer, and Garcia work to try and track down who and why someone has been stalking them. Just like the previous months, ever since Emily had asked their supervisor about their spare key, they come up with nothing.

Garcia traces phone calls to their home phone, coming up with payphone numbers from all around DC and the surrounds. There’s no pattern to where they come from. The day-care’s security footage is equally as unhelpful, the lady who’d taken the request unable to describe the voice beyond ‘female’. They can assume it’s a woman if the supervisor’s account of the person asking for their key looking like Maeve is accurate—they can’t assume that that person is acting alone or whether they’re under the orders of another. Spencer writes a list of people who could hold a grudge against him, beginning with everyone he’s ever been involved with on a case, victim, bystander, disgruntled law enforcement, and then finally onto the unsubs. It’s a long list, even when they only account for woman who fit the profile of someone who could become a erotomaniac stalker.

Too long.

“If this person is convinced that we’re in a relationship, that I love her, then she won’t stop,” Spencer says hopelessly, staring at the list he’s written that’s far too long with no discernible answers. “They’ll escalate if they see me as doing anything that’s a direct rejection of them—like involving you guys.”

“I’m not sure,” Rossi replies thoughtfully. He’s studying his own list—people who might hold a grudge against Maeve. There’s three names on there, and one is tentative. “All of the behaviours you’ve described so far… I don’t think they’re aimed at you, Reid.”

Spencer stares. “I was sent _flowers_ ,” he points out.

“From your wife,” Rossi continues. “Flowers that you normally give to _her_. When this person calls, they call Maeve—not you. To get into your apartment building, to integrate with your neighbours, they emulated Maeve. She could be the target, you may just be a facet of her to this person.”

Spencer shakes his head firmly. That can’t be it. That puts Maeve in the firing line—and no one could want to hurt her, not anyone who _knows_ her. No, if this stalker is after them, it’s because of him and the work he’s chosen, just like they’ve always known would eventually happen.

But whatever he plans to say is forestalled by his cell ringing. It’s their alarm company: their apartment has been broken into. They leave Maeve there and go together. At a first glance, the apartment is untouched.

On the second, Spencer sees what’s missing.

Photos from the mantle. Toys and books from Sebby’s room. A box of miscellaneous items from the living room they’d been packing to go into a closet, mostly containing Maurice’s old things.

Clothes from their dressers.

That night, they stay with Rossi. Their apartment is a crime scene. They discuss what they’re going to do moving forward: Maeve is against staying with her mother while she’s ill, Spencer doesn’t want to intrude on Rossi for longer than they have to. They both know this could trail on for months, stalking one of the hardest crimes to prosecute for without any strong leads.

In the end, it’s decided. They can’t stop their lives, but Spencer refuses to leave her home alone while he works, especially when he’s began to fly out with the team on cases again, too far away to race home if she needs help. They make the call together, and Ethan arrives within the week.

**October**

It escalates faster than any of them could have imagined.

Ethan, who’d been both happy to help while simultaneously horrified this is happening to them, takes his role as ‘guardian of the Reids’ far more seriously than she does. If she checks the mail, he’s there, rambling about jazz as they walk down the hall together with Sebby in her arms. The phone rings once while he’s there and he answers it with glee, informing the person on the other end that the Reids have moved to Australia to enjoy the finer weather. Whoever it is, hangs up, and Maeve can’t help but laugh. He spends his time trying to teach Sebby, who hasn’t mastered walking yet, to dance and trying to get him to play keyboard, or cooking increasingly complicated meals to forestall Maeve’s boredom with the final months of her maternity leave. And nothing goes wrong, until it does

They’re at the supermarket and she’s sent Ethan to go get milk, listening to his whistle fade as he wanders away from the soup aisle she’s pondering through, weighing a can of minestrone in her hand and trying to remember if it’s the brand she likes.

She’s shoved, hard. Hard enough to slam her head into the shelf, hitting the ground on her knees with a yelp and tasting blood on her bitten tongue. When she turns to shout, Sebby’s not in his stroller.

It’s horror like she’s never known it before. When asked later, she’s adamant it took her minutes to react.

In reality, it’s seconds.

She screams. She runs.

And Ethan comes out of nowhere from the other end of the aisle, slamming into the person holding her baby and sending all three of them hurtling down. There’s a fight that’s vicious and Maeve can’t see the person’s face through the crowd staring or the hoodie over their eyes—just her son, screaming as Maeve tries to fight through to get to him, and then the gun that’s aimed between Ethan’s eyes.

She’s close enough that she hears the woman—and it _is_ a woman—say, “Give him back or I’ll fucking kill you.”

She’s close enough to hear Ethan say, “No,” hunched over Sebby and staring that gun right down without a single regret in his expression. And Sebby is clinging to his godfather, arms wrapped tight around his throat as he keeps screaming, and Maeve throws the can.

She’s never made a throw like that before, but she makes that one. The can hits the bitch who tried to take her son, smacking into her skull with a meaty _thunk_ , the gun dropping but not slipping from the woman’s hand. It’s her turn to run—at that moment, Maeve doesn’t care, just flings herself past everyone staring to Sebby and wrenching him from Ethan’s arms, hugging him tight and sobbing helplessly. She doesn’t even remember what follows, just police and the store owner and Ethan refusing to remove his arm from around her shoulders, and then Spencer and his team arriving.

It’s a horrible day and it’s followed by a horrible night. They go home because she needs to go home, she needs to sleep with her baby next to her and her husband there too, _needs_ to know her family can survive this. Spencer wants to go to a hotel but the idea of not knowing her surroundings is horrifying and, besides, this monster has proven she can find them anywhere they go. Nowhere is safe.

It’s midnight when there’s a fire outside. Even as sirens sound up, an alarm, they already know it’s their car. The supervisor comes; they’re already awake. Maeve calls the cops, calls Hotch, while Spencer—armed—goes downstairs with the man. And Ethan stays, sitting on the edge of the bed where Maeve tries to soothe a fretful Seb, a baseball bat they’d teased him for bringing and are now thankful for resting across his knees.

And when Spencer gets back, he doesn’t come straight inside. They hear him before they realise he’s out there, his voice stunned as he talks to someone.

They go out there. Maeve stares. Spencer stares too. Hotch is pale, his mouth thin.

Ethan swears.

Their front door is covered in a collage of photos from an album they hadn’t even realised was missing. From college, from their wedding, photos of Sebby and Spencer and Maeve at every moment of their lives.

On every photo, Maeve’s face is scratched out with a violence that chills her.

On every photo, someone has written, overtop of the smiling images of Seb and Spencer, the word **MINE.**

**November**

Thanksgiving dinner is spent in a safe house with a heavily armed Emily helping Rossi—who is armed, but Spencer doubts as well as Emily is—carve the turkey. They’ve been stuck here three weeks with a rotating cast of either their team members or other field agents assigned to their protection, as the Bureau pours resources into catching the person determined to destroy their family.

It’s been the most boring three weeks of Spencer’s life. Maeve hates the hotel-like home they’ve been put into, completely bereft of personality. The painting of a ginger cat in the living room makes her cry. Everything makes Sebby cry, as he resents the strange surroundings despite relishing in the treat of having his parents all to himself. Spencer isn’t allowed to help with the case now that it’s officially in the Bureau’s hands, neither of them are allowed to leave the safe house, and there’s nothing to do but read, teach Sebby to walk, eat, and sleep. It takes only a week and a half for the tedium to overwhelm the stress. On the bright side, that means they get to have sex for the first time in months, neither of them having been in the mood when the danger had felt real and overwhelming instead of painfully distant.

On the not so bright side, everything else.

Thanksgiving is fine. Spencer makes Emily hold Sebby, working through her irrational fear of ‘breaking him’. They eat and watch terrible movies together, Emily and Rossi taking frequent breaks to check out the surroundings. Spencer knows they would have volunteered to spend the holiday with them to make up for them not being home, and he’s thankful for that, but he also resents that they get to leave here. He resents that they get to be in the loop. He just resents _them_.

Then comes the call. It’s the last thing any of them had been expecting, and the thing that Spencer will be most thankful for at the end of this all: their stalker is caught. While Spencer had been eating dinner with his family and friends, Hotch and the rest of the team had been using his apartment to set up a trap, making it look as though they’d let them go home for the holiday and waiting for the unsub to stroll right in.

And so she had.

When it’s all over, Hotch arriving with the details and asking Spencer to accompany him somewhere, Spencer is so overwhelmed by it being _done_ that he doesn’t even know what to begin asking.

“Why?” he asks finally, but Hotch just tells him to wait until they get where they’re going.

It’s a non-descript apartment building. Spencer follows Hotch up the filthy stairwell until they reach an apartment that’s buzzing with law enforcement, slipping in through the open door to find the eeriest thing he’s ever walked in on in all his years of working with the BAU.

It’s his apartment. A split, mirror image of his home, right down to the photos they’d had stolen now sitting on the mantle opposite. The books in the shelves are—almost—the same, the furniture is similar enough that he has to do a double-take, the food in the cupboard is identical to what they buy. When he walks, dumbfounded, up the hallway, he finds police taking photos of his stolen clothes hanging in a closet that’s identical to his. The room beside that is a nursery, and Hotch is there to put a steadying hand on his shoulder as he stares down into a crib containing Boris-the-bird and Sebby’s favourite blanket, lost months ago along with—

“Spence,” comes JJ’s voice from the door, and Spencer turns like he’s in a dream to find her holding Maurice, the stupid cat purring happily as though nothing at all is wrong with the world. “We couldn’t warn you. Strauss wanted you to come in blind, so we’d know if you were involved at all by your behaviour. The level of detail is…”

“Obsessive,” Spencer finishes for her faintly. He reaches out and pets Maurice just for something for his hands to do, shocked by the way the cat _mrrps_ and headbutts his hand affectionally. “Was it me she was after? All this time?”

“No,” Hotch says, confirming a sinking belief Spencer’s been holding that Rossi had been right, all those months ago. “Diane Turner, one of Maeve’s PhD students that she failed out. This is about Maeve, it always has been. She wanted revenge for being failed out, which turned into an obsession with Maeve and her life that turned into… this.”

Spencer knows what this is: the desire to step so neatly into the life of the person that woman had obsessed over. Taking her belongings, her cat, eventually her family—and her life. There’s no way this plan hadn’t involved Maeve’s death.

“It’ll be an easy enough case to prosecute at least,” JJ is saying. “She’s talking freely now, about how she’s finally going to have everything she deserves. We think, from what she’s been saying, that she escalated so fast because of your friend who was staying with you—she believes Maeve was sleeping with him and used that to further her delusion that she deserves her life more than Maeve does. But it’s over now, Spencer.”

Spencer takes one more look at the nightmare around him before holding out his arms to take his cat back. “Is it?” he asks numbly, holding Maurice tight so he doesn’t lose him again.

He knows that the horror of this won’t fade for a long time to come.

**December**

They’re home in time for Seb’s first birthday, and it’s anything but a hollow celebration. God knows, they deserve this—to celebrate the life of their son that fate had taunted them with almost losing in the first year of his life.

The first thing they do upon getting home is put the apartment on the market. It might take a few months to formalise the move, but they’re unanimous in the need for it. The second is to redecorate. They don’t want any of the items Diane stole from them back, save for Maurice—Maeve cried so much and so hard when Spencer had walked back in holding him that she’d almost had to sit down to gather her composure after—and Boris-the-bird, thoroughly laundered and delivered to a Sebby that had most definitely remembered his missing toy, despite Spencer’s reservations.

Ethan delivers his gifts the week before Christmas. One is a toy piano for Sebby.

The other is a photo album of as many of the pictures they’d lost as he could replace, sourcing them from his own collection, from family members, from Spencer’s team. It’s not every picture Diane took from them, some of which they didn’t have digital copies of, but it’s close.

It’s more than enough.

They begin erasing the mark Diane Turner made on their lives, determined to forget her.


	9. 2011

**January**

There’s a short mishap with his return to fieldwork after he’s cleared for use of the cane, in the form of crippling headaches that leave him woozy and confused. After three weeks of those, Maeve along with several of her colleagues manage to come up with a solution that seems to stall them. For those three weeks though, he’s terrified. His brain is his everything. Any fault with it is a fault with him, his career and his worth all tied up to the grey matter between his ears.

He doesn’t tell Maeve that though. He has a sneaking suspicion that she won’t appreciate the insinuation that he’s only worth loving for so long as he’s mentally whole, even though he’d love her no matter what happened. His self-worth issues are complicated, and he doesn’t feel the need to flaunt them.

But his isn’t the only work that stumbles in the beginning of what turns out to be a terrible/wonderful year. Maeve is due to begin again at her own workplace, with her twelve months of maternity leave coming to a close over the Christmas holidays. This requires Sebby to return to day-care.

It takes Spencer longer than it should have, with the headaches and the hassle of working around those, to realise neither of those things have happened. He doesn’t approach her immediately with the realisation, because he knows that if it was something she was comfortable with talking to him about, she would have already talked to him. He just watches. He waits. And, quickly, he figures it out.

He’s in bed waiting for her, certain that tonight is the night he brings it up and not at all surprised when she brings Sebby to bed with her to lay between them. Sebby, who has decided that crawling is the supreme form of locomotion since Maurice is so good at it, does a four-legged shuffle around the mattress with his eyes on his mom while Spencer chases him, both cackling at each other even though the pain in Spencer’s knee is intense.

“You’re going to hurt yourself,” Maeve scolds, grabbing Sebby before he scoots right off the end of the bed and turning him upside-down so he can’t escape. “Watch your knee.”

“I am watching it,” Spencer protests, lying back with difficulty as the watched limb seizes a little. “Sebastian, tell Mommy that I’m watching it.”

“Da, bada,” Sebastian says seriously, nodding at Maeve, who sighs.

When she settles in beside them, patting Seb’s wild curls as he mumbles to himself in baby, Spencer curls in close and studies her. It’s the kind of leading look he gives right before he asks something she’s not going to like, and he can see her tensing.

“Not going back to work, huh?” he asks.

She doesn’t answer immediately and his heart sinks a little. He’ll support her no matter what she wants—but he knows Maeve. He knows her heart and soul, and her work drives her like his drives him. She’ll never be happy staying home and putting aside the years of hard work she’s devoted to it. It’s a surprise she’s even made it twelve months without setting up a lab in his office and running experiments on Seb.

“I can’t leave him,” she finally says, and her eyes brim with tears. “It’s just not _safe_.”

“Oh, my love,” he whispers, heart twisting in his chest, and holds her tight as she begins to cry. They’re not healed yet, not even a little.

He doesn’t know how to fix this.

**February**

It’s a routine check-up that turns not quite so routine. Maeve is tired and cranky and sore and assuming all of these things are because of her fractured sleep and relentless guilt in the aftermath of what Diane’s done to them, but that turns out to be not the case.

She’ll remember after that it was snowing when the doctor told her, and Sebby was bouncing on her knee with his eyes locked hungrily on a box of coloured bandages across the room.

“Is there any chance you could be pregnant?” the doctor asks.

She immediately replies, “No,” and then thinks, shit. They take bloods that day, her brain buzzing over every intimate moment she’s had with her husband over the past few months; they use protection always, _almost_. The safe-house, mad with boredom and with nothing but the threat of something going terribly wrong… Spencer hadn’t wanted to ask, and she hadn’t wanted to wait.

On the way home, she considers this. If it was then that caused it, she’s already over two months in. They’re already planning on moving to a new apartment—maybe something larger? A sibling for Sebby? A reason not to have to go back to work, iron-clad. No reason to feel guilty or restless, the choice taken away.

Another baby to love, because if there’s one thing they have, it’s love to spare.

By the time she’s driven home, unstrapped Sebby from his car-seat, and carried him upstairs, she’s no longer quite so worried about a positive outcome—a baby won’t break them and they’ve always planned for at least one more. They’d both grown up only children and didn’t want the loneliness of that for Seb.

She’s feeling bright and excited and a little bit like she’s going to be disappointed if it doesn’t turn out to be the case, which are all very new feelings after the past few months of creeping horror, which is when he cell rings to tell her that Spencer won’t be home for a while. He’s still in DC, he tells her, working from the Bureau. She’s annoyed because she wants this time to tell him face-to-face, which is why she asks what’s so important that he refuses to leave.

He tells her that Emily is missing.

Three days later, he tells her that Emily is dead.

**March**

Five days after the funeral, he realises what Maeve knows but hasn’t told him yet. It’s a surprise, but a dull one. He guesses that a little part of him is happy about it, but that part is deep down and far away and can’t really conceptualise a life beginning when he’s still dreading the coming Tuesday when the movie he’d been planning to see with Emily is due to play, without either of them.

Well, without Emily. He might still go.

She’d have wanted that.

Maeve finds him sitting in the bathroom half-shaved and undressed, perched naked on the rim of the bath staring glumly at the pregnancy test box. All he has to do is look at her.

“We’re due in August,” Maeve says.

“Oh,” he replies, and, selfishly, begins to cry. Too heartbroken and hurt to be happy just yet. Emily’s dead, she’s dead and buried, and only because their team failed at the one thing they’re supposed to do: if their purpose is to save people, why didn’t they get to her in time?

Why isn’t she alive for this?

Whatever he’d been planning to do that day, he gives up on it. Washes his face of the shaving cream and leaves it half-stubbly, returning to his bed. Maeve brings Sebby in to sit with him, a distraction from his overwhelming grief. When Maeve is out of the room—fetching Seb lunch—Spencer reaches for his phone and sends a single text.

_> Maeve’s pregnant. We’re having another baby. I’m going to make you hold this one too._

But she doesn’t reply.

He supposes that’s when it really sinks in that she’s gone. If she’d been alive, there’s no way she would have ignored that—not a chance in the world.

When Maeve returns with Sebby’s lunch, Spencer asks, “Can we name her Emily?” because he’s certain this is a sign.

Maeve doesn’t reply, and he doesn’t ask again.

**April**

She attempts to leave Sebby at day-care for a simple half-day and the mere act of driving there has her pulled over on the side of the road having a panic attack. She tries to call Spencer, Sebby screaming in the backseat only adding to her panic, but he’s three states away and can’t help her right now. Just tells her to sit tight, someone will come, as she locks herself in the car with the hazards on and curls in the back with Sebby in her lap, still screaming and desperately needing a diaper change.

When the knock on the window comes, she almost panics anew. Almost.

It’s Will LaMontagne, uniform and all. He waits patiently until she unlocks the door, propping it open and leaning in to tickle Sebby’s chin.

“Henry has been wanting someone to show his new building set off to,” is all the man says, his slow accent calming her in a way the tense agitation of Spencer’s voice over the phone hadn’t. “Would you and Sebastian like to stay the night with us, teach him the correct way to build a house? All that learnin’ has to go into block-building skills, I’m sure.”

She’s crying when she accepts, handing him the keys as he waves his partner away in their cruiser and drives them home to the tidy little corner townhouse he and JJ share. Sebby is put down with a box of Henry’s old toys, Maeve on the couch near him, as Will makes her a milkshake and comes to sit beside her.

“It’s never easy, is it?” he asks. “Watching them fly away every week, hoping and praying that they come home to us. But then, it’s not so safe here, not always. I think about what happened to Haley and little Jack… no, it’s not always safe here. And that’s scary. When I’m at work, all I think about is my little boy at home and whether I’m going home to him that night, whether he’s goin’ to get a story from me or his mama. I know there’s been times when JJ has rung me, never saying nothing but I can tell, she’s scared for us. There’s some threat she knows is coming that she can’t always protect us from. And I think that’s scarier. If I could wrap my boy in a bubble and know he’d always be safe, I think any of us would, don’t you?”

Maeve nods. Her milkshake is making her hands slippery, tight around the mug.

“But there’s no life in a bubble,” Will finishes quietly. “There’s just the fear that one day that bubble will pop, and that’s the kind of fear that eats you. You’ll never get away from it if you let it take hold. Anyway, I think that’s Henry’s babysitter bringing him in—what about we order dinner in and have a movie night. Your boy seen Nemo?”

When she returns home the next day as a weary looking JJ and Spencer arrive, it’s a quiet drive. Spencer says very little, his eyes just as exhausted as hers.

“I think we both need therapy,” she admits, the admission costing her more than she cares to think about. Spencer’s eyes flicker to her, his mouth thinning, but she’s adamant. He’s not coping either, not with Emily’s death or the trauma that had compounded it. There’s alcohol on his breath most nights he’s home these days. “I need it, Spencer. Diane has taken my life from me—my work and my pleasure in my son. I want this family, I want a home for our new baby to be welcomed into. I want all of this, but not at the cost of still being me. I need _me_ back. And I want you back—not this man who is trying and failing to drink his way out of the shadow of Emily’s grave.”

And he doesn’t argue. He just says, “Okay.”

**May**

There’s another ultrasound appointment in May, their baby shyer than Sebby had been and refusing to allow the technician a clear shot of the sex. This time, they want to know. There’s too much uncertainty in their lives right now. Spencer’s sure, he’s completely sure, that’s it’s going to be a little girl. It can’t not be. Finding out mere weeks after Emily was lost? It’s a sign of _something._ Something he’d caught a glimpse of on the floor of Hankel’s shack all those years ago, something more than logic. Maeve laughs at his certainty, right up until the technician confirms it.

“She’s looking to be a long thing as well,” the technician adds with a smile, “all leg. I don’t envy your job of chasing this one when she walks.”

“Probably before Sebby does,” Maeve adds, her smile faltering a little. Sebby, who is talking better than he walks, just grins at her and whispers _bawoof_ at a nearby picture of a dog on the wall.

On the way out, Spencer asks again, his heart in his throat and thumping away so hard he’s not even sure he gets the words out. “Can we name her Emily?”

Maeve takes his hand and doesn’t respond, but neither does she let go.

**June**

The baby name talk is serious, Spencer quiet and not adding much to it; Maeve can tell that it’s because his heart is still set on ‘Emily’. And she’s not against it, not really… she’s just _worried_. She’s discovered this year that Spencer grieves deeply, his every action since the death of one of his best friends influenced deeply by that loss. It will fade as he heals and they both know that—but, right now, he’s sunk in it. She doesn’t want their daughter’s name to be a by-product of his grief making him cling to every aspect of Emily he can.

But she also knows that this could be more than just irrational mourning—Spencer is a logical man, if emotionally driven. There’s every chance this is a desire that won’t fade with time, and because of that she wants to treat it with as much respect as she’d treat any of his wishes, and he hers.

“I like Alanna,” she offers, paging through the index of a nearby psychology textbook and eyeing the names within. “It’s pretty.”

“Mm,” says Spencer, eyes downcast as he spins a coin restlessly on the coffee table. “You have an affinity for Gaelic names.”

“My family were Irish,” she teases. “I have more ancestral Siobhans than I know what to do with.”

Sebastian is asleep. They’re alone. It’s a slow, deliberate movement as she places her book on the coffee table and shuffles over to him, carefully moving his cane before settling down onto his lap and cupping his hands as he automatically brings them up to balance her in place, head tipped back and eyes gentle.

“What’s this?” he murmurs, bringing his lips to her hand and brushing them against her ring before laying them down on the swell of her belly. The baby is long but compact, curled neatly so that only the barest signs of her are beginning to show even though she’s due in two months. “Hello, my beautiful girls.”

“Your beautiful girls miss your smile,” she tells him sadly, resting her nose against his and closing her eyes. “We miss your laugh and your happiness, and Emily would miss them too if she was here.”

“But she’s not,” Spencer says so quietly she can almost hear the heartbreak coming with those words. His hands are pulling her so close now that she can feel the thump of his body against hers, his heart and his pulse and every other tick of the human system. Vibrantly alive and warm and real. Their baby kicks between them, arching and curling as she tries to join in. “I’m sorry. I know I should be over it by now, I should be moving forward… I’m sorry I keep inflicting my relentless grief on you.”

“There’s nothing to be sorry for. You take as long as you need, but know we’re waiting at the end for you to come back to us.”

There’s more longing than reassurance in her voice. He’s not drinking as much now, but he still sleeps on the couch more often than their bed and she misses his hands on her body and his mouth against hers. She wants her husband back, not this shadowy whisper.

And she continues, relenting, because anything to get him looking forward instead of back is needed right now: “I like the name Emily… if you understand that that she’s not a replacement, our daughter isn’t replacing Emily. She’s her own person, and you can’t use her to cling to a memory.”

He nods, trying a smile on for size that doesn’t quite fit him at this moment. “Light,” he says, and she frowns, puzzled. He explains, “Emily means light. I think… I think it’s apt?”

It is, but not in the way Spencer’s thinking of it.

Maeve knows: he’s always been afraid of the dark.

**July**

If there’s one small thing he can rely on when he’s at his lowest, it’s that the children in his life will always have smiles ready for him, especially when he can’t smile himself. He’s curled on his side on JJ’s couch, trying to hide from her that he’s crying for the umpteenth time since March, watching as Henry and Seb whisper together about, “Why Unk’e Pence is sad.”

“Here,” says Henry, walking up half-bowed over because he has a tissue in one hand and in his other he’s hauling along Sebby, who still refuses to walk. “We’s gots tissue for you nose.”

“Thanks, Henry,” Spencer says, smiling despite himself right before the tissue is shoved partway into his mouth.

“Blow,” Henry instructs firmly, nodding.

“Boo,” Sebby adds, nodding too.

Spencer blows, gently. It seems to please them both as they nod like old hens and toddle off, Sebby still shuffling along on his knees while Henry holds his hand firmly. From the kitchen, Spencer can hear them babbling in their hyper-fast toddler talk, too shrill and far away for him to make out more than what he thinks is a request for chocolate milk.

Summoned, JJ appears with the promised chocolate milk, leaving behind the boys and the sounds of blocks being battered together. “Henry says you need this,” she says, nudging him with his knee until he slopes upright and reaches for an unsquashed tissue. “Want to talk?”

“I just miss her so much,” he croaks, his head hurting from misery and tears and stress. “It’s destroying my marriage. Maeve needs me right now and I’m just… absent. Even when I’m physically there, mentally I’m stuck running through that warehouse, hearing Emily scream and knowing I can’t possibly reach her …”

JJ is strangely silent, before putting the flavoured milk on the table and reaching for his hand. Hers is cold and clammy from the glass, but he takes it anyway and treasures her touch; he’ll never take a friend for granted again. “She wouldn’t have wanted you to break over this,” is what she finally says. “Spence… it’d kill Emily to think that she had any part of trouble between you and Maeve.”

“It’s just…” He stops, breathes, pauses—there’s a disruption in his confession in the form of Henry walking in with Sebby tottering after him, urged on by Henry’s, “Yay, yay, step and step!” chant. It’s not his first time walking, but Spencer is eager to coax him into practising his balance further so a good ten minutes is lost to making Seb feel like the best little boy in the world for finally figuring out that two legs are far more efficient than four. Another ten after that go to making sure Henry doesn’t feel left out, and then it’s home-time and the two boys are crying because neither wants the other to be gone.

On their way out, Spencer, toting a Sebastian who sobs like there’s a battlefield between him and his friend instead of JJ and the front door, is stopped by JJ’s hand.

“It will get better,” she tells him. He doesn’t see how it can. Work is empty without her or Hotch or Emily, and his children are going to grow up without him…

But, instead of saying that, he says, “I know.”

**August**

Their daughter takes over twenty-four hours to be born, culminating in a hasty caesarean and a Maeve too tired and doped up to even be aware her daughter is here until almost a day after. When she’s conscious enough to notice the baby on her breast and her husband lingering almost inches from her side, eyes huge with worry and Sebby in his arms, she tries to smile at them all and doesn’t think it comes out as reassuring as she’d hoped. Sebby seems to appreciate the effort though, saying, “Ma-me, be-be,” and pointing to his sister.

Maeve looks. Their daughter is prettier than Sebastian had been so soon after being born, without all the squashed-face wonkiness Seb’s vaginal birth had left him with. She’s delicate and perfectly formed, her—and they _are_ long—legs curled up tight as she suckles happily. Maeve notes with trepidation the fine red hair their daughter’s scalp is thinly covered with. Another redheaded Donovan, oh dear. Spencer can’t seem to take his eyes off of her, his expression more dazed than Maeve’s.

And Maeve decides. She trusts him; he loves their children because they’re their children, not because of the memory of those who are gone. Any choice he makes, she supports.

“You name her,” she says, leaning her head back and adjusting her arms so that the baby’s warmth is against them. “I named Seb. You take this. Fair warning, I don’t plan on having another one, so don’t expect another chance if you get weird and literary about it.”

Spencer is quiet. He says very little for the longest time, just stroking at Maeve’s hand and watching their daughter feed and be burped and then checked over by the nurses, and then he speaks.

He says, “Alanna,” and shrugs with false nonchalance when Maeve looks quizzically at him. “Emily would be pissed if we give her name to someone else. She hates that her middle name is her mother’s.”

“Alanna,” Maeve tries out, loving the feel of the name on her tongue—Al, Ally, Lana. All beautiful, sweet nicknames.

“Nah-na,” Sebby announces, pointing to his sister. “Be-be!”

And that’s that.

**September**

Alanna’s arrival changes things, not all for the better. It’s tougher, definitely. There isn’t an inch of sleep given between a fretful almost-two-year-old and his infant sister and the weeks following her birth pass by in a kind of zombielike state of Spencer not being sure if he’s here or there. The team seem to take this in stride, JJ especially, plying him with enough coffee to give even him the jitters.

Whatever progress they’ve made in therapy over the past few months begins to slide, Maeve beginning to fret at even the idea of taking Alanna and Sebby out of the apartment. They’re still struggling to sell, haven’t found somewhere they like better within their price range, and with Diane’s court case only just being finalised this month—guilty, absolutely, of all charges she could possibly be pinned to—they’re haunted.

Spencer begins to seriously consider their future and what place he needs to take in it. As husband, as father, as federal agent… he’s not sure anymore that he can be all three without Maeve having to give up a piece of herself for him to do so. Not after Diane. It’s going to take years before she’s comfortable with the idea of strangers as their children’s caregivers.

And work hasn’t stopped feeling empty. The heart is gone. He’s going through the motions.

One night he comes home from work and finds Maeve asleep on the couch, Sebby curled up next to her and her thesis sitting beside her. She’d been reading it as she’d dozed off, a notepad next to that. One line of notes harshly scratched out, as though she’d started to consider her previous theories anew before realising there was no point to it.

He wakes her and Sebby, moves them to their respective beds, and then sits in the kitchen with a coffee and all his thoughts about the future keeping him company.

**October**

Once the fallout of Emily’s return settles, Spencer reacts. In the time before that, he’s like a grenade with the pin freshly pulled. Maeve can see it in him, the anger growing, and she fears it. So rarely that he loses his temper, the idea of the explosion coming… Maeve braces, and waits, and wonders.

The day he doesn’t come home from work, she knows the dust has settled. Because his duty to Emily and the team is over now, she also knows that it’s now—if ever—he’ll detonate. And he does.

Oh, how he does.

When she hears his key scraping at the door, the fumbled attempts at disabling the alarm, she knows. He’s clumsy but never blatant about it. This is blatant, and loud. The bang of the door closing wakes Alanna, who cries along with the sound of him swearing.

He never swears.

She walks out there and he’s drunk. So drunk. When he looks at her, she’s not entirely sure he’s even seeing her—not really. Not through those hooded and bloodshot eyes with his body sloped forward like he’s in the middle of collapsing. He brings with him the stink of a bar and too much alcohol, stale and sweaty. Overtop of all of that, most damningly, his face is pallid and swollen from tears. Angry, or broken, she can’t tell which.

He swallows three times but whatever he’s trying to say doesn’t come out as he takes a weaving step and then just stands there, coat still on and keys hanging from his loose hand. There’s blood on his knuckles. The knees of his trousers are torn.

Alanna cries louder, Sebby joining in.

“I shouldn’t have come home,” he manages. It takes him two turns to enunciate the words clearly enough that she can understand them. “I should, I’m. Hotel. I’ll…” He turns to leave and stumbles, slamming his shoulder into the wall instead of grabbing for the door.

“Spencer,” she says. It’s not a suggestion. He freezes.

“No,” she hears him mumble. “Not staying, Maeve. Love. Don’t… I need to hurt over this. I need. Angry. I’m _angry._ ” And he is—she sees his fist bunching. “Let me be alone, one night. Please. They _lied_.”

If she doesn’t let him have this, this one night to fall apart and just be ruthlessly, furiously broken, he’ll bottle this until it destroys him. She knows this. He’s done it before, so many times.

“Okay,” she says, but strides forward and takes the keys from him. “Alright. One night. I’ll take the kids to Mom and Dad’s and stay there—you have your night. Here. Safe.”

“Can’t ask that,” he slurs, and no. He can’t.

But she can give it.

“I’m taking all the alcohol with me,” she warns him as she turns to go and pack the children’s bags. “You can be angry all you want, shout or yell or cry without us seeing—but you’re as drunk as you’re going to get. And if you hurt yourself, I’ll never forgive you.”

The next day, she wakes in her childhood bedroom to her parents concern, her children’s confusion, and a line of messages on her cell ranging from gibberish to hurting to deeply painful. The man on the other end of those messages is, all at once, angry and betrayed and tremendously lonely. If she hadn’t known before just how ferociously he treasures his friends, she does now.

There’s just one that’s both sober and thought-compelling, from three hours before. She reads it three times, wondering what it’s about and barely daring to hope.

_> Spencer: I think it’s time I made sure you always have someone to come home to._

**November**

Hotch can’t even look him in the eye when he hands in his notice.

“Is this about Emily?” he asks, and Spencer bites back the furious surge of anger that brings, an emotion so thick he can taste bile in the back of his throat. “Spencer, we—”

“It’s about my family,” he replies with less coldness than he’d thought would come out. “It’s not permanent, not if you’ll take me back later. But I need it, Hotch. I need to spend some years home with my family, let Maeve find the life she’s been putting aside for me and my whims. I want to raise my children and be there for my wife—my heart is there now.”

“Not here?” Hotch’s voice is gentle, like he knows the answer and regrets it.

“No,” says Spencer.

Not since they buried Emily. Her coming back hasn’t changed that.

“She deserves her passion too,” he tells the others when it’s time to admit to them that he’s leaving, for now or possibly forever. He doesn’t look at Emily, so he doesn’t know how she responds to this. Doesn’t care. It’s not about her. “All this time, I’ve made it about my work and my dreams—and that’s not how I want our lives to go.”

“What will you do?” asks Morgan, and Spencer knows he could answer this with any of the endless lists of things him and Maeve have discussed for him to fill his time with and bring some extra money in: tutoring, teaching, lecturing, consulting, editing. But he doesn’t say any of those, because they’re not his priority.

“Be a husband,” he says instead, “and a father.”

**December**

They throw Spencer a goodbye-for-now party in Rossi’s back garden, and it’s a remarkably joyous affair considering how sad they all are to see him go.

Whatever anger had lingered between JJ and Spencer seems to have evaporated in the news of his leaving, which Maeve is so endlessly glad to see. She’s not sure either Sebby or Spencer would have been able to deal with not seeing Henry anymore if the resentment had remained. Hotch as well seems to have mended the bridges between them.

Emily, Maeve isn’t sure about, until Spencer vanishes for a good half hour and Maeve goes looking. She finds them at the back of the garden, Spencer leaning on a tree and Emily perched like a cat on a rickety fence. They’re talking. They’re smiling, if a little cautiously.

“I’m going to miss you…” she hears Emily say. “I know you’re pissed, Spence, I would be too, but… to come back and get you all back, only for you to go again straight after? It’s the worst kind of irony.”

“Why?” Spencer asks. “You know exactly where I am this time… it’s a lot easier to come around for dinner when you’re alive, you know.”

Maeve smiles. Spencer’s always been terrible at keeping secrets.

Before she slips away, she hears Spencer murmur, “We almost named her Emily, you know.”

Whatever Emily replies, it’s not for Maeve to hear. This is between them, not her.

She returns to the party, alone, sure that her husband is finding his way again, just like she’s finding hers.

“You must be glad he’s quitting this work,” Rossi asks, waylaying her at the barbeque.

Maeve laughs. She knows it’s not forever. “You’ll see him in a few years,” she promises, “when he realises that he’s not so different to me—he’ll never be happy with books alone. Why do you think he became a field agent in the first place?”

But, she knows, it hardly matters whether he returns to the BAU or not, not to her. For the next few years, while their children are small, he’s all hers.

She’s going to treasure every last minute of it.


	10. 2015

**January**

They’ve invaded Emily’s flat for a rare holiday, children and all, when the news comes. Maeve isn’t as rocked by it as Emily and Spencer are—in fact, she’s very much an outsider looking in on their grief, sitting with the children in the living room as Emily and Spencer are there for each other in the kitchen. The few times she looks in, she doesn’t know what to do. Her husband is at the kitchen table with his shoulders bowed in grief, head in his hands. She can see his body shaking as he tries to cry silently. Emily sits beside him, her gaze empty and locked on the wall opposite and a glass of some amber-coloured drink in front of her, untouched.

“Mommy, why’s Daddy sad?” Sebby asks in a voice that carries, standing by the couch with his new toy Big Ben in his hands and his wide eyes worried. Alanna doesn’t seem to even notice anything is wrong, happy alternating between colouring in the picture book Emily gave her and attempting to eat her crayons. Five and three, respectively, Maeve doesn’t know how to explain to them that someone Daddy loves is gone.

“Come help me pack your bags,” she tells Sebby instead, moving across to pick up Alanna and hold her close. “We’re going to have to go home early.”

“Wit’ Emmy?” Alanna asks.

“Very likely.”

And that’s how it pans out. Maeve continues being the outsider for that week, Emily flying home with them as the death of a BAU member brings them all back into the fold. She can’t help but resent it a little; it’s a stark reminder that no matter how far they run from this life, it’s always going to catch up to them. If anyone has illustrated that, it’s Gideon.

His funeral is quiet and smaller than she’d have expected. Gideon had seemed like the kind of person a lot of people _knew_ , although she guesses that’s not the same as being the kind of person a lot of people _like_. But the team grieves openly, and Rossi is just as distraught as Spencer is.

She wonders what happened to the man who killed Gideon, but knows better than to ask.

And what comes after really isn’t that much of a surprise. They’re at the reception on a table filled with faces from the past when Spencer quietly ends the wonderful last three years of her life. “I’m thinking of coming back,” he says to Hotch without mentioning it to her first. She’s not surprised, but she is resigned. They always knew this day would come; she only wishes their children were a little older to lose their dad. “Alanna will be in pre-school this year, it’s a good time for it.”

And she’s wary of how driven to act by grief he is, so she doesn’t say anything to him then. Just goes to Emily after and asks her, “Would you go back? To the BAU, after everything you’ve been through there.”

Emily says no, but there’s a look in her eyes that Maeve recognises: she thinks that maybe Emily doesn’t even know she’s lying.

**February**

It’s a strange feeling, being back at work when he knows that Gideon will never again walk these halls. Although no part of him had ever really thought that Gideon would return, it turns out that it’s still crushing to have the _possibility_ revoked. Everything reminds him of the man: Rossi’s office he has to look at twice, the first time seeing walls of birds and a shelf of survivors’ photos; his desk is the same one he’s always had, the one that Gideon showed him to on the very first day he’d arrived here, so long ago; the conference room filled with the memory of him. He misses him more than ever because he no longer has the comfort of knowing that he’s out there somewhere, with his milkshakes and birds and hard-sought-after peace of mind.

During his weapon recertification with Morgan, he asks him: “Am I back too early?” because he’s wondering it himself. The way he’s haunted by Gideon’s ghost, maybe this is a knee-jerk reaction of not wanting his family of choice to slip away while he’s busy raising his family at home. It’s a greedy impulse by a man who refuses to lose anything that he’s worked to gain, even though he’d planned to stay home until Alanna was at school, at least.

“Dunno, man, only you know that,” is Morgan’s response, lounging on the wall behind him. He’s barely even correcting Spencer’s stance or aim, and that’s gratifying, to realise that three years off the job haven’t really dulled his edge—not after a solid month of Hotch retutoring him up to standard. “Do you think you’re back too early?

Spencer thinks about that for a moment, right before ceasing to think about it as he focuses on passing this round. Then, he thinks about it some more, while he reloads his gun and sets up a new target.

“No,” he says finally, feeling settled in a way he hasn’t in a long time. “I’m happy to be back.”

Morgan’s smile is as wide as it can be, not even widening when Spencer passes his recertification with flying colours. “Damn right you are,” he says. “And we’re happy to have you. It hasn’t been the same without you, doc.”

 

**March**

In March, she gets a startling email from her agent: her book has been accepted for publication. She’s very stunned and surprised as hell, and not sure who she wants to share the news with first. It’s been a long eight months since she submitted the manuscript and, with everything they’ve had to organise with Spencer going back to work, it had completely slipped her mind. But there it is, in type 12 Garamond, declaring that soon enough Dr. Maeve Donovan will be a published author and congratulating her on her achievement.

She doesn’t tell anyone at work, because what she wants is to see Spencer’s face first when she shows him. It’s been a dream of hers for as long as she can remember, to have received this email, and he’s supported her for over ten years now. Endless nights of editing and re-editing, him over her shoulder giving advice or simply ensuring the kids are fed and quiet so she can focus—no, she’s decided: he must be the first she tells.

But when she gets home that night, and the nights following, the kids are all asleep and Spencer’s on a case. The nanny she doesn’t know well enough to want to tell and she finds herself wandering around the small apartment they’ve been living their lives in ever since Diane had forced them out of their old one, looking at every book on the shelves and fancying her own up there beside them. She resents, just a little, the empty bed she goes to that night, the email printed out and folded up in her bag waiting to be shown to him when he returns.

He’s not back that night, or the next, and their phone calls are harried and tense. The nanny tells Maeve that he calls home every night, before she gets there, and reads his children to sleep. That’s comforting and it soothes the resentment, but when he finally returns and she gets home to find him already asleep, she misses who they could have been together if they both weren’t so deeply driven by their work.

In the end, though, she can tell he’s happier now that he’s back with his team, and she can never resent his happiness. The email stays in her bag and, in time, is forgotten.

 

**April**

He’s actually home for most of Easter Sunday, organising with JJ and Hotch to take all the kids out to a park in the centre of their respective homes and have an Easter egg hunt. He’s not ashamed to admit that out of all four of their kids plus adults, him and Will appear to be the most excited about the actual chocolate, Maeve having to promise him a bag of his own of the tiny Cadbury eggs so that he stops sneaking away to nab them from the hiding spots before the kids can get them.

It’s there that JJ and Will share the news that Spencer already knows—that there’s a brother or sister on the way for Henry, another godchild for Spencer and Penelope, and Spencer’s never been more excited to add another to their laughing brood of children. Jack is taking his position as oldest seriously, marching Alanna around and making sure she has at least as many eggs in her basket as the boys. Henry and Sebby have teamed up against the other two, with Henry acting as look-out and egg counter while Sebby tries to guess the most likely places their parents would have hidden them. Spencer wonders where a new life will fit between their established groups, but he’s not worried. They’ll fit in easy, just like the others have, and he knows he’s going to love them no matter what.

Besides, one more kid equals far more chances for chocolate robbery.

**May**

In May, she takes the kids to her parents’ home. It’s a place that’s changed slowly over the years, becoming muted, quiet, still. Never a loud place, now the silence is forced and all bound up in the exhaustion visible in her mother’s eyes. They’re fighters, the Donovans, even if they’re not loud about it—Maeve is living proof of this, because she’s never let anything difficult in her or her husband’s lives push her down—but even the strongest rock can be worn down eventually if the water is relentless enough.

And this cancer is relentless. Maeve knows that Gideon’s death will only be the first of many griefs they suffer over the coming years.

But that’s not yet. Right now, she’s sitting with her mother still alive by her side and Alanna on her lap staring wistfully out the window. They’re watching Sebby show off his piano skills with his poppy, although all Alanna wants is to take her ball outside and kick it around.

“Can I go play outside, please?” Alanna is asking over and over, while all Maeve is wondering is who taught Sebby to play the piano so well without her noticing.

“I’ll take you, my love, come on,” Maeve’s dad declares, swooping her off Maeve’s knee to general giggling and wiggling. “Seb, play for your nana, there’s a sweet lad.”

Maeve fiddles with her cell, watching Sebby pluck at the keys thoughtfully, before finally asking the question she’s been wondering.

 _>_ _To Spencer: Did you teach Sebby piano?_

He’s at work, so she’s not expecting a fast answer, but an answer she gets: _Yeah, he’s very good. We were going to surprise you. Are you surprised?_

Surprised she is, most definitely, hiding her smile by looking down at her phone.

“Look at that,” her mom says suddenly, watching Alanna racing in circles around her poppy. “Looks like you’ve made a daughter that’s the one thing you can’t handle.”

“What’s that?” Maeve asks, startled.

But her mom is smiling, even the tired lines of her face failing to dull the pride there: “She’s _sporty_ , love. You’ve got a little athlete.”

Once again, Maeve looks out at her daughter, feeling a thread of trepidation. They can do sports. Right? Spencer’s a genius—surely, he’s equipped to handle this?

Despite her surety, she decides to break it to him gently.

 

**June**

He gets back to DC one afternoon from a case and, instead of going straight home like Hotch had told them to, he drives to the graveyard where Gideon is buried. He’s not sure why, except that it’s been almost six months since he’d died and so much has changed. Spencer’s traded lunches and storybooks and online conferencing for jet flights away from his family and late nights barely having time to think about them, and he’s happier than he’d been but still not sure he’s doing the right thing. Some large part of him, the profiling part, is quick to remind him that’s likely because he hasn’t faced Gideon’s death yet, not really, despite having faced his body.

So he goes to the grave. The problem is, there’s someone else already there.

Spencer recognises the man from the funeral. He’s never spoken to Gideon’s son before, and never even really heard Gideon talk about him, but there’s something familiar about him that reminds Spencer that Gideon did once go home to his family at night. It’s a jarring thought.

“I know you,” says Stephen after a single glance at him. “You’re the protegee.”

That’s uncomfortable. Spencer nods without speaking, self-consciously reaching up to rub at an itch on his neck in the absence of anything else to say. Stephen watches him as he does so, his eyes Gideon-cold with none of the rare warmth. Spencer can tell that this man doesn’t like him and, after a beat, he wonders if he can really blame him, while also not quite understanding how Gideon could have caused this. Would he ever replace Sebastian with a protegee linked to his work? Could he do that, if he saw more of himself in a stranger than he did his own son?

He doesn’t think so. After all, he’s not Gideon.

“You’re married, huh?” Stephen asks suddenly, his eyes on Spencer’s wedding ring. “Kids?”

Another nod. Spencer focuses on the headstone: Jason Gideon. That’s it. Jason Gideon, and the dates of his birth and his death with his entire life distilled to the small dash between them. No devoted father, beloved husband, dearly missed friend.

“Yeah, well.” Stephen looks back at the headstone and Spencer realises: he’s the one who would have ordered it. Was it spite that made him keep it empty… or was it just that he didn’t know the man he was burying? “Good luck. Hope you’re not like him.”

And then he walks away.

Spencer doesn’t stay after that. He turns his back and leaves that place, determined to go home to his family in order to continue proving to himself something he’s just realised is integral to who he is: that he’s not Jason Gideon, and he never will be.

 

**July**

A storm blows over them, but they’re safe within. The kids are asleep. The windows are open. They’re awake, watching the wind and the rain and the crash of the thunder and being thankful that none of their children are frightened by the noise. It’s beautiful, really, the way that the purple clouds overhead change the hue of the night, the horrendous July humidity washed away in the downpour. Maeve is under him when it truly reaches them, her eyes wide open to see the way that the flash of lightning directly overhead throws him into stark relief. In that second, she sees every way he’s different from the first time they did this, and she sees every way that he’s the same. His weight on her is heavier, his hair shorter and curlier, his eyes surrounded by shadows that hadn’t been there when they were younger. But inside her he feels just the same, despite her having had two kids since that time and the wry thought that maybe she doesn’t feel the same to him anymore, although technically only one of them had used that route. His hands on her are just as gentle, his mouth just as loving, and he’s saying all the same sweet things he always has when they’re reminded of why they’re together.

The storm ends but they don’t, and she doesn’t regret being tired in the morning to see the sunrise confirm everything she’s seen tonight: she’s always going to love this man and this life, and their ability to weather every storm, together.

 

**August**

August is the month of several things happening, all of which they celebrate together, except for one.

The day that Alanna turns four, Sebby starts school. It’s tearful for all of them, not the least Spencer, who wakes up extra early just so he can cheer his son on before leaving for work. Sebby’s backpack is almost bigger than he is, standing nervously by the door in his brand-new uniform as Spencer takes endless photos on his smartphone.

“Maeve, help me text these to JJ and Garcia,” he calls out, tapping buttons curiously and accidentally turning the photo upside-down. “Wait, Sebby, one more—I broke that one.”

“Don’t be late home tonight,” Maeve warns him, carrying out their birthday girl with a party hat already on her head and maple syrup ringing her mouth. “You’ll miss her party.” They both know he’s already going to be cutting it close, but he’s determined to at least be here for the cake and presents. Maeve’s taken a day to plan it, and he’ll be damned if he doesn’t at least get to taste the cake she’s going to attempt to bake.

“I’ll be here,” he promises.

But he’s not, because that’s the day Scratch attacks.

**September**

Spencer is hiding something. It’s been two weeks since Alanna’s birthday, and something has gone very, very wrong in their home. It had started with him not coming home that night and, when he had, bringing with him the distinct smell of sage on his clothes. There’s a bruise on his cheek and a cut over his eye and he’s not talking, he’s just not talking.

Following that came the nightmares. He’s had nightmares before and she’s been there for them, when she can be and their schedules allowing, but these are different. They drive him not only out of their bed but also away from any sleep he’s gotten, right back into the arms of the insomnia he’d battled when they were first getting together and that’d he’s managed since then, until now. She finds him pacing the house at all hours of the night, working his way from Alanna’s room to Sebby’s and then back to theirs, perching on the side of the bed before starting the whole loop again. When he does sleep, it’s light and broken, fitting awake and complaining that everything is keeping him up. The light of their digital clock, even though it’s never woken him before, the sound of a car passing outside.

If she didn’t know better, she’d say it’s hypervigilance. If she didn’t know that there’s no way he’d hide it from her, she’d suggest it’s a symptom of PTSS.

If she didn’t know him so well, then she’d think he was lying to her.

When she tries to question his team, she meets a wall of silence. Even Garcia is refusing to say anything and all she gets from Morgan is, “There was an incident.” But Spencer isn’t talking and they won’t tell her, and it all comes to a head the night Alanna cuts herself. It’s a complete accident—she’d dragged a chair to the fridge to reach the cookie jar up there and knocked down the knife block they keep up there out of reach instead—but it’s also bad enough that she’s going to need stitches. Maeve is calmly wrapping it for the drive when Spencer walks in, and reacts.

There’s no denying it after that. They also don’t talk about it until after the hospital, when they’ve brought home a sleepy, stitched-up Alanna and put her and Sebastian to bed, when Maeve finds Spencer in the kitchen staring down at the dribbled line of their daughter’s blood.

“Something happened at work,” Maeve says firmly, expecting no response and not getting one. “Spencer, look at me.”

He doesn’t.

She closes her eyes and sees, once again, the way he’d buckled when he’d seen the blood on the floor the first time. The blank terror in his eyes and the rasp of his breath and the way he’d completely and utterly shut them out. “You had a panic attack because Ally hurt herself,” she presses. “I can’t remember the last time you had a panic attack—and certainly not because of an accident. You didn’t even blink when Sebby fell down the stairs and concussed himself. Spencer, you _need_ to talk to me.”

“Nothing happened,” he lies. And she sees it: he’s going to keep lying. There’s not a single part of his expression that reads like he’s thought otherwise.

So they fight.

It’s the worst they’ve ever had and, for the first time, they raise their voices at each other. Later, she’ll be horrified by this, especially when he slams out of the apartment and she’s left to realise both the kids are awake and crying. Sebby’s in Alanna’s bed, hugging her tight and staring at Maeve like he doesn’t recognise her, and she thinks she might throw up at the horror of that. Her fear of Spencer’s lies had manifested as anger at his work, and she knows that she’s pushed him dangerously close to having to choose: her or the job.

They’d agreed when they’d married that they would never ask that of each other but, tonight and in the heat of the moment, she’d screamed it at him. And he doesn’t come home, so she calls the only person she knows can reach him when she’s like that, now that’s she’s proven that it’s absolutely not her: she calls Emily.

It’s four a.m. when he slips into their room, sober and red-eyed and silent. She’s awake and he knows it, turning to look at him and pressing a finger to his lips in case he hasn’t noticed that both children and Maurice are all asleep in the bed with her. Obediently quiet, he ghosts over to her on silent feet and crouches to press a kiss that’s all stubble to her cheek, opening his mouth to say something.

She doesn’t let him. “Don’t tell me yet,” she says, closing her eyes and hating that this is her penance. “Not until you’re ready.”

Because Emily had promised her: this isn’t forever and, one day, he would be.

 

**October**

They’re given a gift for their tenth wedding anniversary that’s infinitely more precious than tin or aluminium. Two weeks before then, when Spencer’s sure that he’s about to crack from the pressure of trying to separate his home from his work when Peter Lewis has so violently thrown them both together in his mind and welded them close with a glue made of blood and fear, Hotch calls Spencer into his office and sits him down to give him the gift. It’s from all of them, he says, plus Emily—who’d come up with the idea after a frantic midnight phone call from Maeve.

And the guilt of that fight is still destroying him, so that’s what’s on Spencer’s mind when he opens the envelope and finds that their gift is a weekend at the cabin they had their honeymoon in, just him and Maeve with JJ and Will ready and willing to take the kids for that time, Garcia offering to look after Maurice.

He doesn’t know what to say, but they all seem to understand how much he appreciates this anyway. And he makes a decision: they might not be saying it in so many words, but he knows what this weekend is in aid of.

He needs to tell her.

It’s their second night there when he sets the fire going and joins her in the bed. There’s nothing in this room to haunt him except the very best memories he cherishes and so, in the safety of their sanctum, he finally tells her what happened the night that he’d gone to save the doctor from the man hunting her. What Scratch had made him see, and feel, and taste.

Their children, dead. Her, dying. His hands, bloodied.

The knife in his hands, still warm from his grip.

“He made me believe that I’d killed you,” he whispers, closing his eyes and seeing Sebby’s empty eyes again, the same as he has every time he’s closed his eyes since. “And now I dream of it, as soon as I fall asleep it comes back and I’m hurting you, again and again and again…”

Maeve is silent and he’s too scared to look at her in case he sees that Scratch has turned him into him: a monster in her eyes.

“Your work has never changed you, not in all the time that you’ve been doing it,” she says finally, sliding down into the bed to pull him close against her body, his heart beating fast and hers slow. “You’re still the same gentle, loving man I tripped over at that party all those years ago—this man can’t change that, no matter how much he tried. You know that, don’t you? He hasn’t changed you.”

“He’s damaged me.”

“He’s a _blip_.” Her voice is angry now, but it’s an anger aimed at Scratch, not him. “He’s a blip on the radar of our lives and already getting further away. And you’re still you—you wouldn’t be so frantic if you weren’t. Do you really think that if you were capable of hurting us in the way he made you see, that you’d be so utterly terrified of the concept?”

He shakes his head slowly, but she’s not done.

“Spencer, look at me. Promise me—you haven’t changed and I don’t think you’re ever going to, because you being kind is a fundamental part of who you are—but if you ever really think that you’re changed or hardened or, I don’t know, ‘damaged’ by your work, love, walk _away_. Don’t try and push through it alone. The moment you stop being you and start becoming Hotch or Gideon or Rossi, you walk away and come back to us before it’s too late. Please?”

He rasps out, “What if I become like Scratch?”

And she responds without hesitation: “Impossible.”

And he sounds so sure that he promises her. No matter if its in two days or three years or twenty, he promises.

 

**November**

After a gruelling three days in Portland, Spencer stumbles home in the painfully bright hours of the morning and crawls into bed, knowing that most of his Saturday is going to be spent trying to catch up on the sleep he’s lost instead of spending this rare time with all his family home. He’s sorry, but also aware that he desperately needs to sleep, and barely manages to kiss Maeve before passing out. The next few hours pass in the broken sleep of the night shift, a feeling he’d forgotten in the interim years since leaving the BAU and that he’s horrified to realise seems to be hitting him a lot harder now that he’s older than ever before and with three years of regular life behind him. At one point, he’s aware that Alanna has crawled into bed beside him and is sleeping under his arm. At another point, he wakes just enough to know Maeve is putting a glass of water beside the bed for him.

And at the last, he wakes to Sebby screaming. He goes from dead asleep to completely aware in seconds, Alanna blinking sleepily awake beside him even as he leaps over her and sprints out into the hall of their apartment towards the sound, already mentally unlocking his gun safe and arming up.

But no one is hurt, or in danger, or injured even. He finds Sebby crouched on the carpet near the window leading out to the fire escape, Maurice crouched over something that’s moving weakly under him. Maeve is lingering, her eyes on that thing and a plastic bag in hand.

“Maurice got out,” she explains, Spencer catching Alanna before she can toddle past and into striking range of the deeply growling Maurice protecting his prey. “I think it might be a rat.”

“Is it dead?” Spencer asks warily, thinking of disease vectors and inoculations and having to see his children cry at the sight of a needle. Sebastian, at his words, sobs louder.

“No, no,” he bawls, so red-faced and frantic that Spencer has to do an awkward half-shuffle over there—still holding the fascinated Alanna back—in order to try and one-armed hug his son. “It’s not dead, Daddy, it’s not _dead._ You have to help it!”

Maurice just rumbles another growl, tail lashing and white-filmed eyes narrowed. Spencer looks at their geriatric cat, well aware that if it comes to a fight, Maurice will likely win. Even mostly blind and almost deaf with one gammy leg, he’ll win. But the snippet of fur under him moves weakly and Maurice does a surprising thing. Instead of biting it until it ceases to live anymore, he lays down flat with the fur under him and begins to clean it busily. Spencer blinks, Maeve making a soft noise of disgust—and the fur uncoils into a whisper of a kitten, little blue eyes blinking up at them hazily as it opens its mouth and rasps out a peeping sound.

“Oh!” says Sebby. “Daddy, look. It’s a baby Maury.”

“Can I touch?” Alanna asks hopefully, inching closer to the patch of dirty, yellow fur.

In the end, the outcome of that day is inevitable, and that’s how Spencer finds himself sitting alone in the living room at midnight attempting to syringe feed a kitten that’s smaller than his palm laid flat. Maeve is long asleep, as are the children, and Spencer watches the kitten with wary acceptance of what it’s bringing into their life. Its chances of survival are minimal, the vet had warned them, and Spencer can tell that both kids are already _deeply_ invested in its survival. Maurice, now that care and feeding of the starving newborn have been handed over to his people, ignores it.

“You’re not going to survive, are you?” Spencer asks the kitten in a whisper as it makes a low squeaking noise and begins to knead his hand with tiny, needle-like claws, eyes squashed shut. It’s really very ugly, with a pointed tail and stubby paws and strangely shaped face surrounded by that wispy yellow fur. “You’re going to make me have to explain the concept of death to my small children, aren’t you?”

The kitten sneezes milk onto him in response, and then it does something very surprising.

It lives.

**December**

Despite Spencer and Maeve being the ones who nurse the barely-alive kitten back to the land of the living over the month they have her, Sebastian is the one who falls in love with her first—which is unsurprising, Maeve realises, since she’s pretty sure Sebby had loved her even when they’d thought she was a half-eaten rat. Because of his devotion to her, even learning how to correctly feed her using the syringe right up until she figures out solid food, he’s given the task of naming her.

And that’s how Cheese Whiskers joins the family.

It’s two days before Christmas and Sebby’s birthday. Later, Maeve will think about this, something terribly wonderful hurting deep in her chest. If ever she’s doubted the intelligence of animals, this goes a very long way towards dispelling any of those doubts. Ethan finds him. He’s staying in the guest bedroom, having arrived with a child’s violin for Sebastian’s birthday, wrangling a promise of lessons for Sebby out of both her and Spencer before handing it over to their son. Maurice, who’s always loved Ethan more than possibly anyone, except her children, sleeps in there with him. And, on this cold and miserable December morning, that’s where it happens.

The first they know of it is a soft knock at their door interrupting Spencer trying to talk her into sex, promising that they can be quiet enough that no sound of it will carry through the sleeping household. Distracted from their bed, he opens the door and finds Ethan standing there, holding their cat.

“He’s not breathing properly,” Ethan says with horror in his voice and tears in his eyes. “I woke up and he was like this.”

Maurice is wheezing, his eyes barely open and his chest rapidly shifting as he tries desperately to get air. Maeve barely has time to cuddle him close before Spencer and Ethan are dressed and gone, whisking him away to the vet’s in the cat carrier he’s always hated but doesn’t fight today. The last she sees of him is Ethan holding the carrier, a single paw pressed against the mesh, and then he’s gone.

They come home without him.

That’s a horrible morning. They sit the kids down before breakfast, still sleepy-eyed and confused as to what’s going on and why Mommy is crying. Ethan holds Alanna; Sebby is cuddling the kitten. Maeve looks at that kitten and thinks, Maurice knew. He knew. That’s why he brought Cheese home.

With that thought, she’s crying too hard to be of any use, Alanna beginning to sob too even though Spencer hasn’t told them yet that Maurice is gone. That the terrible, ugly, mean old cat that Maeve had found in the trash all those years ago, the one who’d been there to see both of them be born and grow, who’d seen Maeve and Spencer graduate and move on in their careers and who’d been alive for their wedding, was put to sleep by the vet in the early hours of the morning with Ethan petting him the whole time. In typical Maurice fashion, he’d bitten Spencer when he’d tried.

And when Spencer finally manages to find the words, they don’t understand. They’re just too young. Despite this, they know that something awful has happened, and there isn’t a dry eye in the house.

It feels like something has ended.


	11. 2016

**January**

This year begins, unlike the last, with the addition of a life instead of the loss of one. Michael LaMontagne is born, and Maeve can tell from the second that JJ formally asks Spencer to be his godfather that Spencer loves him just as deeply as he does Henry.

Rossi throws the happy family a celebratory dinner, beginning their year with something they all need after their sad Christmas: laughter and family and being together. JJ sits with her baby in her arms, Will hovering proudly overhead and Henry telling everyone how much he loves his new brother, more than anyone ever loves their brother—inciting a small battle between him and Alanna, who declares that no one could love a brother as much as she loves Sebby, after all, she lets people call her Banana because of him. Sebby, who hates being reminded of how he’d been unable to pronounce ‘Alanna’ for so long, refuses to get involved.

And she always remembers Spencer in this moment, frozen in her memory as the man with the widest smile there despite not being one of the new parents, teaching the children magic tricks as he shares with them the things that he loves while living the life they cherish. She always remembers this moment, because she thinks it might be the last time he really, truly believes in magic. After all, everyone changes, even him, and they’re about to enter the hardest two years of their lives.

But they don’t know this yet.

 

**February**

February brings the flight to Vegas, and he knows it as soon as he sees it. When he walks in the room to see his mother, for that heartbeat of time, she doesn’t know him.

She doesn’t know him.

While he’s waiting for the preliminary testing to complete, he considers this. Wonders how he would feel if it was him losing the memories of the children he cherishes, his memories of Maeve. What would replace them? Confusion and anger and loneliness? Or would be manufacture a new life, one filled with fantasy instead of the people he loves? It’s a terrifying concept that he returns to over and over and over again, realising that he fears this even more than he’d feared the schizophrenia that had claimed his mother’s mind and his childhood. Perhaps he’d lost a lot to her mental illness, but he’s going to lose even more to this disease: he’s going to lose her completely.

When it’s confirmed, he’s hardly surprised. Just grieved. When it comes to his mom, he’s long learned to expect the news that will crush him the most. If anything, what hurts most is the realisation that this is it. He’s never getting her back, ever. And it could be him one day. Everything slipping away from him, remembering no one and remembered by no one except as the FBI agent present at the worst moments of their lives.

It’s the lowest point he’s ever been, curled in his hotel room thinking of loss and wondering what the worth of a human life is without the memories to quantify it, when his cell rings. He almost doesn’t answer the video-call, not wanting his wife to see his red eyes and hurt expression, but in the end he’s glad that he does: she shows him their children sleeping soundly and he realises something.

He’ll never be truly forgotten, no matter what.

And neither will his mom.

**March**

The end of March brings the confirmation of Diana’s diagnosis, beyond all doubt. Spencer’s too young to be tested quite yet, but there are some promising blood protein trials underway currently that she promises him they’ll keep an eye on. When he comes home from Vegas, tired and haunted by the idea that he’s going to turn into his mother despite dodging schizophrenia, she’s there for him. And she’ll always be there for him—no matter what the future holds, and this she promises.

“What if I’ve passed something on to our kids?” he asks.

She tells him they’ll face that together too.

Something else is decided in those quiet few days of adjusting to this new reality, the one where their time with Spencer’s mom is finite and running out fast, no matter how much they try to cling to it. No more, says Spencer. No more. They’re getting older, the both of them, and he’s decided that he’s a genetic minefield—they have two beautiful children, why risk another? She’s saddened by this, sometimes looking longingly at Alanna’s stroller folded in the hallway closet, but agrees anyway. For his peace of mind, she agrees. She begins testing to get a tubal ligation; he’s already booked in for the vasectomy. They’re taking no chances.

And the one thing she doesn’t let him forget is this: he’s worth more to her than just his grey matter.

But that’s all they have time to plan for because, as the month draws to an end, they get the news: Morgan’s been abducted. Once again, Maeve sits at home and watches her husband rush out into the night to save a loved one.

Once again, she prays that he returns to her.

**April**

He spends a lot of April helping Morgan with his recovery from the torture he underwent, troubled by the shadows of pain in his friend’s eyes that goes deeper than the chemical burns on his chest. Savannah seems haunted by how close they’d come to losing him, and troubled that they still haven’t found who and why he was taken to begin with.

“Can we talk, man?” Morgan asks suddenly one day, sitting in Morgan’s living room watching something inane on the TV together. As it turns out, what Morgan needs most right now is just company, and there’s no shortage of that with the team banding together for him. Even Hotch has come over for beer and steak, gently prodding Morgan to take his recovery more seriously. “Look, I really gotta start thinking about what I’m going to do after this.” He gestures to his chest, closing his eyes like remembering it hurts him just as much as pulling at the still-healing wound does. “Do I come back?”

“I don’t know,” says Spencer, suddenly realising how close they’re coming to parroting a previous conversation. “I mean, you love this job… it’s a part of you.”

“It’s not all of me,” says Morgan with devastating simplicity. “After Scratch… I know you lied to Maeve. You didn’t tell her that he dosed you, not for months. Why not?”

“I was scared.”

“Of what?”

The answer to this is one he’s ashamed of, but so dangerously relevant that Spencer doesn’t dodge it. “Of her telling me it’s over. Not our marriage—I’ve never worried about that ending—but… my work. If she’d put her foot down then and said I needed to choose, I would have walked away and always regretted it. So I didn’t give her the chance.”

It’s not entirely accurate. In the end, she’d figured it out anyway and given that ultimatum, and what had he done? Not walked away from the work.

He’d walked out on her.

That’s troubling too.

“Am I going to bounce back from this,” Morgan muses, not really a question so Spencer doesn’t answer. “And if I do… what about next time? And the next? When do I stop bouncing?”

“We haven’t stopped bouncing back yet,” Spencer replies with false cheer.

Morgan shakes his head and reaches for his drink with a devastating truth: “Emily didn’t.”

And he’s not really wrong, so Spencer wonders.

**May**

In May, Derek marries Savannah and they’re so happy to have this chance that Maeve can’t help but get swept up in the celebrations herself. Everyone is overjoyed to see him settle with the one he loves, even Garcia. Especially Garcia. Maeve can’t help but feel a bit teary eyed herself, seeing how much Garcia cries as she stands at his side as his Best Woman and proud to be so.

Morgan demands a dance with her before the night is out, whirling her around the dancefloor in such a fashion that she understands truly what Spencer had meant when he used to talk about Morgan using dancing to seduce the women he picked up when single. The whole night makes her think back fondly to her own wedding, watching Spencer dance with Savannah and then Emily and then JJ in turn, even letting himself be drawn into a silly waltz with Rossi himself. Far from the man who’d told her he didn’t know how to dance all those years ago, she looks at her husband tonight and remembers that he’d run out of paper when trying to write down every reason why he loves her. He’s confident and strong and happy, and she can’t handle the emotions this night brings, crying again before the end of her dance with Morgan. Somehow, he seems to understand, handing her back to Spencer with a hug and wink.

The father-daughter dance with Spencer and Alanna is more than she’s ever dreamed of, watching for a moment before leaning down to take Sebastian’s hand and, very seriously, asking him to honour her with a dance. “Okay, Mom,” he tells her with his serious eyes locked on hers. “But you have to lead because I’m not very good.”

“Always, baby,” she promises him.

When the wedding is over and they’re all poured home courtesy of their sober driver, they put the children to bed in record time. She’s not the only one feeling nostalgic for their wedding, she considers, as they spend the rest of the night drunkenly recreating the first night of their honeymoon in muted silence in their locked bedroom, a frenzy of need and desire on both their behalves that isn’t sated until they’re too tired to move anymore, falling asleep in a pile of naked, sticky skin with Spencer’s alcohol-tinged breath warming her chest where he’s nestled.

She’s never been more grateful for the man with his waxed paper boat, and never more happy to have married him.

 

**June**

In June, they make videotapes for Diana with the kids. It’s Maeve’s idea, and he loves her for it. Each tape begins with the person featured saying hi to her and reaffirming who they are—a heartbreaking precaution and one that the kids don’t seem to fully understand the gravity of, laughing every time they’re directed to, “Make sure you tell Grandma who you are.”

“I’m Alanna, silly,” all of Alanna’s begin with, and Spencer laughs every time, hoping that his mom sees the humour in it too despite the underlying grimness. “And I’m your very best granddaughter, aren’t I, Daddy?”

Sebastian’s are far shyer. He doesn’t like the camera, staring at his hands clasped together and trying to hide behind the red curls over his eyes. “I’m Sebastian,” he whispers, too soft to be heard so Maeve patiently repeats it after him. “Can I show her Cheese? I love Cheese.”

Spencer also hopes that his mom appreciates just how many of their videos are going to feature their idiot cat, front and centre, staring cross-eyed at the blinking red light of the camera with her tongue poking out.

It takes a bit for Sebby to be coaxed into fetching the violin Ethan bought him and playing it—none of his family having heard him play before, even after six months of lesson—but, eventually, they manage it. In the end, when Spencer’s cell buzzes right before Sebby’s about to start playing, it feels about right for his luck recently, really.

Sebby refuses to play if his dad isn’t going to see it, and Spencer leaves feeling like he’s ruining something by not being there, despite Sebby seeming to understand how important it is that he goes.

 

**July**

There’s a promotion coming up at work that Maeve is vying for, but it means extra-long hours and days spent on flights to cities all across the US, always from her home and family. After some discussion with Spencer, they decide that she should go for it. With the children getting older, their apartment is getting smaller, especially now they’re old enough to have started amassing hobbies that they want to explore. While they live comfortably now with a large monetary safety net amassed by their years of focused work with few breaks for personal time—Maeve’s salary growing exponentially as her specialisation attains more and more focus and her name gains renown—a shift to a standalone home would place a temporary dent in their funds that this promotion would offset considerably. Then there’s college funds to save for, retirement plans to consider, the possibility of a care home for Diana that’s more specialised than the one she’s in…

This promotion is necessary, even if she’s starting to feel like Spencer, questioning the time she spreads far away from the parts of her heart she’s missing.

She rings home that night, Face Timing Sebby as he points her towards a very serious recitation of _Goodnight Moon_ produced, directed, and acted in by her husband himself for Alanna’s great amusement. It’s hard to believe he’s some big scary FBI agent when he’s dancing around pretending to be a rabbit, and that’s what she loves about him. Despite their fears and worries, an FBI agent isn’t all he is. Which means she’s more than she feels right now too, and it reaffirms her focus: for her family, she’ll put the hours in. They’re make it no matter what.

When he takes the cell from Seb to talk to her, she tells him: “I got it.”

They’re always moving, onwards and upwards, all the time.

 

**August**

They both miss Alanna’s fifth birthday party, but she doesn’t seem at all bothered by this when they come home to an already tidy apartment and Alanna blissfully playing with her new toys, the dolls already showing signs of Cheese having chewed on the faces and hands. After a hurried discussion in the bedroom, they put her to bed as a unit, ready to face any anger she might suddenly manifest on their absence from her celebrations.

“Mommy and Daddy both have very important jobs that sometimes mean they miss out on fun things like birthday parties,” Maeve is explaining to her patiently as she brushes her hair, Alanna seemingly more focused on making sure she doesn’t drop the picture book in her lap. “And it makes both us and you very sad when we do that, so we want you to know how sorry we are that we weren’t there.”

“I’m not sad,” Alanna says, holding the book up. “Daddy, can you read tonight? And do the voices? The silly ones.”

“You don’t mind even a little that we weren’t there?” Spencer presses, taking the picture book and turning to the first page as Sebby scuttles in the open door, ready to listen. “If you’re upset by something, Banana, you always have to tell us—otherwise we can’t help you.”

“Not even the teensiest, weensiest bit,” Alanna declares, holding her hands close and then clapping them together to show how very not bothered she is. “My friends were there, including my bestest friend, and I fed Cheese ice cream, which you’d say no to if you were there, so it was good you weren’t.”

This derails the conversation into a mini-lecture about what Cheese can and cannot eat before the important business of the storybook can be gotten to, which is why when Spencer feels his cell hum to alert him to a text in his pocket, he ignores it for just that little bit longer, refusing to end her birthday on a lecture instead of a story. And when he’s done—making sure to do the silliest voices—and kissing her goodnight, he’s gratified by her, “Love you, Daddy. Don’t forget to come home tomorrow so you can read this book, because I love it so much you _must_ , or I might die.”

“Love you too, Alanna Banana,” he responds, to muffled giggles from the corner of her room where the bed is. “And I’m sure you’ll survive.”

“Don’t worry, Dad,” says Sebastian as Spencer grabs his go-bag and gets ready to leave, watching him from the doorway of his room. “If you’re not home tomorrow, I’ll make sure she doesn’t give Cheese bad foods—and I’ve been practising the silly voices that Mom isn’t very good at.”

Spencer, as he kisses him goodbye and wishes he didn’t have to, makes sure to tell him just how proud he is of him, always.

 

**September**

It’s been almost a year since the last Scratch nightmare, but that’s what Maeve thinks this is at first. Spencer jolts beside her, his eyes snapping open despite his posture remaining unchanged, and she watches him carefully in the glow of her reading lamp, book lowered, waiting to see if he’s awake or not. Sometimes he’s not. It’s not often, but sometimes he opens his eyes and talks to her before closing them again and slipping so smoothly back into being unconscious that she knows he was never really conscious at all.

“Paternal instinct is a deadly bias,” he says to her quite clearly, looking confused at his own words. She realises—this is about Morgan and Savannah, and the shooting.

This is about Morgan leaving.

“Sweetheart, wake up,” she murmurs to him, putting her book aside and rolling to meet him midway, hand on his cheek. “Spence, hey. Shh, shh, it’s just me.”

He blinks twice and she watches clarity flicker into those hazel eyes she knows so intimately. “I dreamed about Hank,” he says. His hand touches hers on his cheek, fingers tightening around hers before he rubs his eyes. “Morgan died, he was killed, and we took Hank in…” He looks troubled, more so than even that concerning dream should make him look.

“Morgan’s safe,” she reminds him, curving a leg over his and snuggling close, ear to his chest and just listening to him breathe. “He’s home with Savannah and Hank, and they’re both safe. You guys ensured that.”

“No,” say Spencer. “He ensured that… he saw that his family would never be safe while he was at the BAU, so he ensured it by leaving.”

It’s this conversation again, the one that keeps coming back to haunt them over and over. She’s tired of it and knows he is too, torn between the two things he loves too much to risk. And they’re not at the end yet, this she knows. Something will have to give in order for him to find the answer he’s searching for, otherwise either direction he takes will end in regret and resentment.

“Are you okay?” is all she can ask.

“Yes. Maybe. No… I don’t know. I’m still me. I’m more me than I’ve ever been—I’m finally _comfortable_ in my job, finally sure that I’m everything the position needs. I’m not the wet behind the ears kid they hired, and I’m not vulnerable anymore. But…”

“But Morgan wasn’t vulnerable, and he still quit.”

A slow nod. Spencer’s grieving Morgan’s resignation, she knows, despite the fact that they have a standing dinner reservation at the Morgans’ home once a month, at a minimum. “Yeah. And I’m not him… I can’t give this job up.”

That’s not entirely true: he’s given this job up before.

“Is that all the dream was?” She doesn’t think it was, he’s still looking too raw even as the details fade. “There wasn’t anything else?”

“The man who tried to kill Morgan,” Spencer answers in a slow voice, his heart beating a little faster, “he had a revolver to his head… five empty chambers. Hankel did that to me when he took me. Six chambers, one bullet. Click click… I still remember that clicking. I’ll never forget it, and now Morgan won’t either.”

He carries a revolver at work. She doesn’t bring that up now though, just traces her fingers across his chest and watches the light catch her wedding ring, his arms closing around her shoulders and hugging her tight.

“I’m scared I’m going to hear that clicking again,” he whispers hoarsely. “That’s what the dream turned into. Hankel with his revolver and the five empty chambers, but every chamber was a near miss. Click, anthrax. Click, the train in Texas. Eventually it won’t be empty, and then it won’t be Hank without a dad—it will be Alanna and Seb, and you’ll be alone. How selfish am I that I flirt with that possibility?”

“You’re still you,” she says despite everything in her body screaming at her to take his vulnerability right now and use it to force him home to her. “You still smile. We said we wouldn’t discuss you leaving until that changed, remember?”

All he does is nod, holding her tight until they both drift off. And, when morning comes, he refuses to discuss it once again.

And she doesn’t bring it up, because she can’t bear the guilt of not knowing what to tell him.

 

**October**

He gets home one night to Maeve sitting at the kitchen table staring at a piece of paper in her hands and the children completely silent. Cheese is playing with her new favourite toy, a cat treat they’d given her a month ago that she still hasn’t realised is edible, and Spencer walks over to kiss his wife while side-eyeing their cat.

“She’s really not very smart, is she?” he teases as Cheese turns to attack the treat and instead gets frightened by her own tail, running into the fridge and then out of the room, hissing and spitting with her tail fluffed in rage. “I think there might be something wrong with her. Maybe we should get her tested.”

Maeve doesn’t smile, just holds the paper up for him to read. It’s an invitation to a violin recital issued by Sebby’s music teacher, proudly announcing that Seb is to have the leading role. When Spencer reads this, and then turns it over, he finds a handwritten note from the teacher informing them just how well their son is doing in his lessons.

The date is yesterday’s.

“How did we not know about this?” he asks, stunned and upset that they’ve missed something so monumental. He wasn’t even aware that Sebby could play—they’ve never heard him, and he’s always been shy about talking about his lessons.

Maeve’s lips thin out, a strange expression crossing her face. “Sebastian. Why didn’t we know about this?”

He turns to find his son standing sheepishly behind them, hands behind his back and eyes averted in anticipation of a scolding, Cheese twining around his legs and purring madly with her whiskers tipped up in a cat smile.

“It’s not important,” he mutters to his shoes, eyes fixed on the cat. Spencer has to swallow around those words, feeling something heavy and sick drop into his gut and lodge there to stay. “I didn’t want you to take time off work for it, or be sad that you couldn’t make it.”

“So you hid it.” Maeve’s voice is a terrible cross between anger and heartbreak; all Spencer feels is the heartbreak. “Why would you hide it? We would have loved to see you play, Sebby. You know that.”

Seb shrugs loosely and Spencer wants to grab him and hold him tight and never, ever let go of him, not until he knows how fantastically important he and everything he does is to them. “If Dad took time off work, someone might die,” Seb says. Spencer blinks, and has to swallow around that again. “And you’re doing important research, Mom. I’m not even very good yet, so it’s not important.”

He’s not even six years old. Spencer, in that moment, considers several things: he considers that he needs to spend more time with his son and he considers that they’re going to need to get him IQ tested to gauge his needs over the coming few years, which isn’t overly surprising considering the environment he’s been immersed in since the day he was born, and he also considers that, sometimes and in this especially, he hasn’t been a very good father.

“Please don’t ever hide anything like this from us again,” he says finally, his voice too sharp for what he really wants to express right now. “I’m going to be speaking to all your teachers to inform them that all notes and communications have to be sent directly to us, since we can’t trust you to deliver them. And we’re very, very upset by this.”

“Disappointed?” Seb whimpers, the tears he’s forcing back very audible.

“No,” says Spencer. “Upset. And hurt. I’m not disappointed that you tried to do the right thing—I’m upset that you believe the right thing is hiding your achievements from us instead of giving us the chance to tell you how proud we are of you. That implies that you don’t believe that we _are_ proud of you, Seb. So, so proud. You know that, right?”

“Yes,” squeaks Seb, now crying for real.

“That’s enough,” Maeve says quietly, standing and walking over to pick him up. “Let’s go sit down in your room until we calm down together, okay? Breathing time.”

As soon as they’re out of the room, Spencer reaches for the phone.

 

**November**

They have Thanksgiving with Maeve’s parents this year, the gathering filled with friends and family she hasn’t seen in years and hadn’t realised how much she’d missed until now. They’re all delighted to see—and, in some cases, meet—her children and how much they’ve grown, with Sebby shrinking back from all the attention heaped onto him while Alanna seems to luxuriate in it. Spencer has somehow gotten hold of a video of Sebastian’s violin recital and is showing anyone who wants to see it—which, it being a family gathering, is _everyone_ —and Maeve is sure they’re going to have to have family counselling with their very much a wallflower son with how red and worried he’s getting about everyone watching him play.

But he’s brilliant, shockingly so, and Maeve pulls him up onto his knee and cuddles him close, making sure to tell him that his family all love him very much—and he doesn’t need to be the best at violin for that to keep being so, he just needs to be the best at being him.

 

**December**

Sebby’s seventh birthday happens in the shadow of the mass breakouts, Scratch included. Spencer manages to take the lessons he’s learned over the last year and chase his fears to the back of his mind while they celebrate what he suspects will be the last year Sebby wants his birthday on his _actual_ birthday, a small glimmer of resentment appearing about the abundance of Christmas festivities instead of birthday cheer in their usually placid son. Next year, they’ll let him pick a date and roll with that. But the thought of next year brings those fears flying back, the manhunts they have coming and the monster that looms…

Scratch is out there, and Spencer’s worried that there’s a storm coming that none of them can escape, and all because he’s put his family directly in the line of it.


	12. 2017

**January**

They find out that Michael has croup just a day too late to avoid him passing it on to Sebby, who politely—because his parents have always taught him to share with his sister—gives it straight on to Alanna. Maeve is out of town but offers to come home that night, as Spencer walks an endless path between both his ailing children and their hoarse, barking coughs trying to care for them. It’s exhausting, terrifying work, and they’ve never really been sick like this before, except for chicken pox when Seb was two.

And he tells her not to come, even though he desperately needs her there telling him that his children aren’t dying of this horrible cough, Alanna trying to shriek with pain and only hurting herself more and Sebastian curled in a miserable ball in his bed, the sheets around him stained with sweat. It’s about the point when Alanna starts up a horrible wheezing that Spencer convinces himself they need to go to ER straight away before both his children die a terrible, barking death.

There’s a knock at the door. He opens it with what he knows is a frantic, wild-eyed stare to find Maeve’s father standing there with a diaper bag and a tense smile.

“Maeve called,” says the man after an awkward pause. “Figured you could use a hand.”

“You drove all the way here to help?” Spencer asks, stunned. It’s a three-hour drive, and it’s late.

“Well,” says Harry Donovan after a beat. “What’s family for? Now, have you tried steam?”

**February**

Maeve’s at a conference when the call comes, rerouted to her cell after both Spencer’s and the home phone failed to pick it up. When she sees the Las Vegas area code on her cell screen, her heart drops.

When she answers it to a brisk, “This is the Las Vegas Police Department,” she’s already bracing for the worst, which is exactly what she gets. She’s a neuro-geneticist, she’s spent her life working with and around the human brain and all it’s disfunctions. When they tell her that they have Diana Reid with them after she was found wandering around a casino disorientated and confused, every alarm bell in Maeve’s head is chiming.

It takes an hour of frantic arranging to sort it out: Spencer’s on a case, somewhere in the country, and she can’t reach him. Instead, she apologises to the conference runners, organises the nanny to stay with the kids for the time being until Spencer comes home—all she can offer her is the fold-up couch as a bed, which she’s never not ashamed of, but Cassie doesn’t seem to mind—and books herself a plane ticket to Vegas. Diana is family, and family needs to be there for her.

When she walks into the police precinct in Vegas that night, she finds Diana looking up at her like she’s her worst fear come to life. “Don’t tell Spencer,” is the first thing out of her mouth, which is going to be a problematic promise to fulfil seeing as Maeve’s already sent him a dozen texts. The second is, “Why are _you_ here?” said in a kind of voice that implies Diana’s not entirely sure who she is but resents her for some reason anyway.

Which is horrifyingly familiar.

“I’m Maeve Reid,” Maeve says quietly, kneeling in front of her with her hands on Diana’s knees, making sure to meet her eyes and look as honest and open as possible. “I’m your daughter-in-law, Spencer’s wife. Remember? We came to visit you before our honeymoon. You gave us—”

“Books,” Diana cuts in, _her_ smile appearing and replacing the confusion, although her cheeks are still pink with shame. “Of course, I gave you books. A happy home is a well-read home, and Spencer’s home should always be both. How are my beautiful grandchildren? Is Alanna still divine? I must read to Sebastian soon, his is a mind that requires whimsey or else he’ll become bound by logic. A terrible fate for a poet’s son.”

Maeve laughs gently, leaning up to brush her lips across Diana’s cheek, feeling the skin dry and cold under her lips. She loves this woman, and she’s terrified of what’s coming. “Spencer’s not much of a poet.”

“Rhyme hardly matters when you have a lyricist’s soul, Maeve, you know this.”

When Maeve leads her from there and takes her back to Bennington, Spencer finally calls. He sounds strange, his voice thick and shaken. He tells her, first, that Hotch is gone with Emily taking his place. After that, they turn their attention to Diana, even though Maeve knows that if _she’s_ shaken by Hotch’s defection and Scratch’s targeting of his son, Spencer’s twice as thrown. It doesn’t take long between the two of them working together to unpack Diana’s medications and behaviours for the realisation to sink in for both of them, Spencer’s voice taking a stunned kind of grief over the line from his hotel in Boston: Diana’s not going to get better.

Whatever comes next, Maeve thinks as she lies awake on the camp bed in Diana’s room that night, they’ll face it together, as a family.

All of them.

**March**

He takes his mom to a treatment facility in Houston, staying there for several weeks in order to help settle her in. He barely has time to miss his family with how busy his mom keeps him, all the new realities of his life settling around his shoulders with every day that passes and slams home that his mom isn’t well and will never be well again.

Most days she remembers him. Some days she doesn’t. Those are the worst.

No… the worst is that even on most days, she doesn’t remember his family. She remembers him as he was in college, eighteen years old with just Ethan beside him, before Maeve and before their children and their careers and all the life they’ve lived since then. For a week and a bit, he resigns himself to this, before the ache of missing his home becomes too much and he begins to talk.

He tells her about the croup and how scared he’d been, rambling on over a chessboard as she watches him with one eyebrow raised. And he doesn’t think she’s following, until she laughs and is suddenly telling him about when he had croup as a baby and how scared she’d been for him.

“Poor Sebby, he’s as delicate as you were,” she declares. Some weight lifts from his shoulders then, some knowledge that they’re going to get through this as she tells him about being his mother and how much she loves seeing him as a father—warning him of all the troubles to come when his children become teenagers.

Some inkling of what might have to come.

**April**

She has a busy, lonely April, torn between work and the kids with Spencer still in Houston with his mom. Work is harder when she knows that she’s going home to an empty bed, and home is harder yet when she’s facing her children’s endless questions about, “Is Grandma going to get better?” and Spencer’s miserable voice over the phone. The answer is no, and time is running out.

Spencer’s getting desperate and she can tell. It’s late one night when he whispers to her over the line: what if we try something new? Untested pharmaceuticals from Mexico of all places, he could slip over the border and back before anyone noticed… he’s already done all the research. She listens with growing concern to his dangerously detailed plan, knowing the answer he’s wanting from her isn’t one she can give. There’s no point to saying yes. All he’s doing is grasping at straws, trying to fix something he simply can’t—and all because his mind has never let him fail before, especially not when the stakes are as high as they are now.

“Spence,” she says softly, cutting him off mid-ramble. Putting aside the danger to his career if he crosses the border without briefing the bureau, putting aside every risk he’s placing himself under… “You know that’s not going to work… she’s declining fast.”

He’s silent. He knows.

“She didn’t get into the trial,” he says finally, confirming her fears. And she knows what needs to come next.

“We can put Alanna in with Sebby,” she says, hearing him inhale sharply. “Bring her home, Spence.”

**May**

May is a lull. His mom settles into their apartment better than she’d settled in at Houston, her mind oddly cognizant when she has the constant reminders of her family around her. The kids love having their grandma so close, constantly pestering her to read to them, which she does happily any time she’s not resting. There are subtle hints of her decline, but they’ve slowed and there’s a month, just a month, where they can all take a breath.

But the month ends.

**June**

The first Maeve knows of her world as she knows it ending is a phone call. It’s Alanna’s day-care and, at first, as she picks at the muffin she’d bought for lunch and bemusedly listens to the woman on the other end of the line ramble on, Maeve thinks it’s all some kind of terrible prank. It has to be, because nothing else makes sense. She doesn’t laugh though; there’s nothing about this that’s funny.

They tell her that Spencer had arrived less than twenty minutes ago to collect their daughter. That doesn’t make sense. It’s Tuesday noon. He’s at work. She tries to query this but the woman is crying, barely calm, as she continues on to tell Maeve that, instead of picking up Alanna, Spencer had pulled his weapon on a roomful of frightened pre-schoolers and their carers. This is why Maeve doesn’t laugh. Instead, she gets angry. How _dare_ they imply that her husband would do such a godawful thing?

But, in the noise behind the lady’s voice, she can hear crying. The sounds of children screaming. And sirens.

Her world as she knows it crashes inward, with her trapped in the middle.

She gets to the pre-school in a daze, finding police everywhere, parents and children milling around. It looks like a battleground, like the scenes they see on TV some nights—it looks like what Spencer must see everyday at work, but this isn’t at his work. It’s here, at home, and she doesn’t see her daughter or husband anywhere.

Somehow, she finds her way to the police officer heading the battleground, and it’s him who tells her what the woman on the phone had been too panicked to: Alanna is gone. Spencer took her. That, Maeve thinks for a second, is a relief. She’s safe then.

But she’s not. Ten seconds later they inform her: her husband is wanted, because his daughter isn’t all he took. They make her watch the footage of the ‘incident’ as they’re calling it, looking for confirmation that it’s him. And, before it happens, she confirms it—because the man walking into the day-care is most definitely him, looking confused and a little annoyed as a woman greets him and leads him into another room off-camera. The investigator tells her that they have no record of the day-care contacting him in order to ask him to come there—so why is he there?

She doesn’t know. She can’t answer that.

And then it happens.

She watches numbly as the door opens and he appears again, his face turned away from the camera and body obscured by the woman in front of him. The woman is holding Alanna, who is crying. She’s crying, and Spencer isn’t even looking at her, and it’s then that Maeve sees the gun, sees the carers see it, sees the children in the room start panicking. She closes her eyes and lets it play out without her watching.

“He didn’t do it,” she hears herself saying distantly. “He didn’t abduct that woman, he didn’t.”

But they don’t listen to her.

She calls Emily and refuses to say anymore.

When the team arrive, Maeve is as incoherent as every staff member is insisting Spencer had been. They’re all lying. All of them, for some reason, and she tries to explain this to Emily and JJ when they walk into the room where she’s been told to wait. They’re telling him that he seemed _high_ , like he was on drugs—like he was some violent man out to cause hurt—but it’s _Spencer_ , he _wouldn’t_ , and she’s so relieved when Emily says, “We believe you,” that she starts crying.

JJ takes Maeve to pull Sebastian from school and take them both home where Rossi already is with Diana: protective detail, they tell them grimly, Maeve sitting on the couch with Diana beside her and Sebby on her lap. Diana is silent, pale, terrified. Sebby’s hand is in his mouth, a panicked recession to childish traits in the face of his father and sister’s disappearance. They think it’s the monster named Scratch, the one who attacked Spencer so long ago—that he’s drugged Spencer to force him into the acts that they’re saying he did. But they also say this: right now, finding her family is the most important thing. Once they’re safe, they can prove his innocence—and JJ seems so sure that Maeve is forced to believe her.

And so they wait.

Finally, the call comes, almost sixteen hours later. Maeve is still trying to move through the knowledge that there’s an AMBER Alert out for her _daughter_ , listing her husband as the abductor, when JJ’s cell rings. Seb and Diana are asleep in Maeve and Spencer’s bed, the door standing open with Rossi peering on them in case of what, Maeve isn’t sure—someone coming through the window, perhaps? It sounds ridiculous, but so does everything else today.

“Maeve, listen to me,” says JJ firmly. Maeve listens. “This is going to sound frightening, but I promise there’s an explanation. Georgia state police just picked up Spencer walking down the side of a highway carrying Alanna. They’re both okay. Spencer’s been injured, but not badly—they’re both okay. Do you understand?”

Maeve does, making a sound that’s a cross between a sob and a relieved laugh as she covers her mouth and remembers how to breathe. They’re _okay_.

But JJ isn’t smiling.

“Oh god,” says Maeve, realising that. “What else?”

JJ looks past Maeve, to where Rossi is standing, and Maeve braces. “They’re holding him on suspicion of murder,” JJ says finally, ending this wild ride by slamming it right into a wall that Maeve can’t comprehend. “According to Emily, they described him as covered in more blood than his injuries warrant, still under the influence of something, and they can’t find the carer he took. He’s not talking yet, but we need to take you there for Alanna, now.”

“I’ll stay with them,” Rossi says, nodding to the master bedroom. Maeve can’t even think to thank him.

She just goes.

The jet ride is silent. Emily sits beside Maeve, holding her hand. Maeve’s glad for that point of contact, some reminder that she’s still here to feel—even if she resents that the warmth of Emily’s palm keeps slamming home that this is real, that it’s not a dream that’s going to end. That there isn’t an easy wake-up from this.

That there’s a final destination that they’re hurtling towards.

When she gets there, she goes to him first. It’s a mistake. They have him in a cell, a cage, and when she walks into that room and sees the bars between him and her, her knees almost buckle. But Emily is there to catch her, to hold her up. To help her take those final few steps and call his name.

He doesn’t react. His eyes are open and he’s breathing slowly, but his gaze is unfocused and he doesn’t seem to hear her. When she says his name again, he looks at her. There’s no recognition in that gaze and she stumbles back, finally seeing everything else about him besides the bars between them: the blood all over his clothes, so much blood. The bandages on his hands and arms. The scratches on his face. And he doesn’t know her.

“I can’t,” she whispers, turning her back on her silent, unfamiliar husband in his tiny, unfamiliar cage. “Where’s my daughter?”

They take her to her, and she finds her broken. Curled in a ball in the corner of a couch with a woman from CPS sitting with her and JJ nearby, Alanna has her hands over her ears and her eyes scrunched shut. There’s blood all over the yellow dress that Maeve dressed her in this morning, a lifetime ago. Handprints of red the size of her father’s hands. A bruise on her cheek just barely showing, a pattern of fingerprints biting down hard on her jaw. Someone has hurt her. Someone has hurt their baby, their little girl, and Maeve lurches forward with a sob and drags her daughter into her arms.

“She hasn’t spoken since we found her,” she’s told by the CPS officer. “We can’t even get her to change out of those clothes. Come morning, we’d like her to speak to a child psychologist, to see if we can evaluate the harm done and find out what happened.”

In the morning, Maeve hears. It sounds like a lie. A night like this she’s sure will never end.

 

**July**

The first day of July, the morning after the day he’s lost, brings clarity to him.

Everything is bright. Loud. Sharp. He hunkers down, away from the medley of unpleasant stimuli all clamouring for his attention, wondering if this is madness. If this is dying. If he’s dead and this is what waits after.

Snippets of memory.

A knife. Hands. His daughter screaming. Him, screaming. He remembers the knife and his daughter in a single rush of sound and sight, and barely has time to croak out a warning before he’s vomiting from the sheer, agonising horror of that thought. He needs to know if she’s okay, if she’s alive, if…

But he does nothing instead, trapped in his own mind and the rush of the drugs.

When he wakes from that, clarity is within reach. He reaches for it. Misses it. Reaches for it again.

Blinks and finds Emily beside him. He’s handcuffed. Wait, what?

“What?” he croaks, shaking his hands and staring at the cuffs. “Emily, what?”

“Hey there,” she says in a voice like he’s a victim, which he guesses is better than him being a suspect. Mind frayed and fracturing, he blinks twice, misses what she says in the interim, looking down to find his clothes stained rust brown. Blood. He’s covered in blood. When he tries to move his hands to touch, to see if it’s real, they burn under the thick bandages, deep, stinging aches. And he tries to remember, and then remembers too much.

“We need to know where the woman you were with is,” Emily is saying slowly, her dark eyes intent on his. What woman? he thinks, dazed. What about Alanna? Where’s his daughter? Maybe he said that out loud, because she answers: “Alanna is with Maeve, she’s okay, Spence. No, you can’t see her, I’m sorry. We need to know where the woman you were with is, Carol Atkinson. Do you know what happened to her?”

Her. He knows. He knows… something about her. Slowly, he shakes his head. But it’s important, and he needs to tell her why…

“I killed her,” his mouth says without his conscious command, Emily visibly reacting to that. He clenches his hand, just like he had around the knife—so Emily can see—and makes a stabbing motion, his brain chugging slowly over it. “I… I stabbed her. Like this. Over and over and over.”

“Oh, Spence,” she says. He closes his eyes.

“I don’t know why,” he mumbles. But it feels important that he remember. “I just know that I had to. Sorry, Em. Sorry.”

The next few hours pass in a blur. He watches it from outside of his drugged-up mind, distantly filing away everything he sees. His family is kept away from him. They find the body of the woman he killed, five miles away from where he was picked up. They find her, Emily tells him grimly, in the cabin where Hankel had taken him all those years ago, surrounded by drugs and paraphernalia. Nothing makes sense. He remembers nothing from the day before. Nothing.

At one point, Tara tries to speak to him. He tries for her and, instead of remembering the day before, he remembers stabbing his daughter. Her screaming and him holding her down as he hurts her over and over again. His panic is catastrophic. By the time he comes back to himself, it’s hours later and he’s been sedated for his own safety.

One good thing comes of that. They agree to let him see Alanna, to see that the memory that scared him so much is manufactured. That he didn’t kill his daughter.

But when they bring Alanna into the room and she sees him, she screams so loudly that they have to take her away again. After that, he doesn’t really care what happens. Whatever he did, it must have been terrible, and he curls up in the corner of his cell with the memory of Alanna’s terror and Maeve’s horror etched indelibly into his mind, never to be forgotten.

And then everything happens very quickly. He expects to be charged, formally, but that doesn’t happen. All because of Garcia.

It takes some time because, at this point, she’s more focused on harrying the lab techs who took his bloods in order to get a tox screen back—he listens uncaringly as Emily tells him that, beyond the massive quantities of heroin and cocaine in his system, they’ve also found scopolamine—but it’s Garcia who realises that his victim isn’t who they think she is. It’s not Carol Atkinson at all. And as soon as Emily tells him her name, he remembers.

Lindsey Vaughn.

“I don’t understand,” he says, almost sober now as they open his cell door.

“We ripped that place apart, Reid,” Luke tells him firmly, the one to walk in and uncuff his hands. “There was insulin in the trunk of her car along with the drugs she used to disorientate you. Forensics found your hair and salvia in the trunk too—you didn’t go there by choice. Her dad’s gun was there too, covered in both your prints. No way could you have gotten that unless _she_ gave it to you, and the staff at the day-care confirm that that’s the gun you were holding when you were there.”

“I don’t understand,” he repeats again, shaking his head slowly. What the hell is going on?

“She tried to frame you, Spencer,” Emily tells him gently, holding the cell door open for him. “Whatever you did to her, it was self-defence. She lured you to the day-care and hit you with the scopolamine when you went in to get Alanna. After that, we don’t know what her plan was, but it definitely didn’t involve you walking out of there with your daughter in one piece. You’re free, Spence—no one thinks you did this. Come on. We’re taking you home.”

And they do. The jet ride is a confusing rush of them talking around him, trying to connect Scratch to this plot and failing—their relief audible, even though all he can think about is Alanna’s fear so he’s not quite sure relief is appropriate just yet—and the drive home is silent, Emily doing nothing but focusing on the road.

When he walks into his apartment, Maeve is waiting. They don’t say anything, just hold each other close.

“Never scare me like that again,” his mother snaps when he hugs her too, clinging tight to him anyway. “When I heard that you were _there_ , I wanted to tear that place down.”

“She would have too,” Rossi jokes, smiling thinly.

But Sebby lingers behind Rossi and, when Spencer reaches out to him, he scowls and disappears back into his room.

“He’s a little angry with you,” Maeve admits, as Spencer reels back against that. “Alanna’s… scared. It’s okay, Spence. They’ll see that whatever happened wasn’t your fault. You’ll see.”

“Just get some rest,” Emily tries to tell them.

He doubts he’ll ever be able to rest again, not until they know who did this, and why. No one hurts his children, not like this.

Not even him.

**August**

They make their first breakthrough in therapy with their shell-shocked daughter, but it takes two months to do so, and the shattering of Spencer’s heart. Maeve’s glad she was out of the room when the psychologist had pulled Spencer aside and carefully suggested that maybe Alanna would speak more if he was absent.

And that hurts more than Maeve can put into words, seeing Spencer slink from the room like Cheese when she’s in trouble, eyes hurt and body shrunken in. There’s no way this isn’t going to leave a lasting mark on him, and she doesn’t know how to make it better, not when Sebastian is still furious with him and she doesn’t understand enough about what happened to try and explain to the children in a way they understand that Daddy _didn’t_ do anything. That none of this is his fault, even though it seems that way right now.

Right now, however, their bubbly, bright, talkative five-year-old is sitting in the psychologist’s office drawing the picture she’s been instructed to in her artbook and saying nothing, much like she has been for the past two months. The apartment is horribly quiet without her chattering, and every dinner of silence seems to pull Sebastian deeper into wherever he goes in his head when he refuses to acknowledge the people around him.

Maeve’s looking at her hands and feeling useless when the psychologist leans over and touches her hand, pointing to the picture. They’d told her to draw a picture of Daddy, of what scares her so much about him now, and she’d always refused to do so before… until now.

It’s shaky and childish, mostly made of abstract lines and circles, but Maeve recognises the shape that’s always indicated Spencer before, and a terrifying amount of red around him. He seems to be alone.

She swallows.

“Can you tell me about this?” asks the psychologist, seating herself on a cushion on the floor with Alanna and touching the paper. “What’s happening here?”

“Daddy’s bleeding,” is the muffled response, Alanna staring moodily at the picture. “He’s got hurt.”

“How did he get hurt?”

Alanna shifts, eyes flicking from the psychologist to Maeve and back to the picture. “He picked up a knife with the sharp side, like we’re not supposed to.”

The psychologist makes a soft noise before saying, “Well, that was terribly silly of him. Why was he so naughty to do that?” Maeve baulks at this approach—they’ve been careful not to indicate any guilt on Spencer’s behalf for the events of that day, since they’re trying to _save_ his relationship with his children, not _destroy_ it. But, before she can speak out in his defence, Alanna throws her pencil down with a loud noise of anger.

“It’s not Daddy’s fault!” she explodes, tears in her eyes and her little hands bunched. “Everyone’s so mad at him, but he didn’t do anything! It’s not fair, not _fair_. The lady made him be silly with the knife, she made him!”

Something loosens in Maeve’s chest, something she hadn’t been aware she’d been holding until now; horribly, she suspects that it might be the small part of her that wonders if Spencer _is_ guilty of what they say he is. But not anymore, not now, surely not.

“And how did the lady make him silly with the knife?”

These are questions the police and FBI have all asked her, but Alanna’s never answered before. This time, she does.

“She made him drunk,” she says, pointing to something in the drawing Maeve can’t quite see. “Like people on TV, when they fall over. And then she told him to be bad.”

Maeve swallows and speaks, despite having been instructed to stay silent: “What did the lady tell him to do? Do you remember?”

Alanna nods, but hesitates, inching over to Maeve. After a nod from the psychologist, she darts up and wiggles onto Maeve’s lap, all warm and damp like she’s sweating despite the cool room. Maeve hugs her tight, letting her nestle close to her and away from whatever is frightening her. After a long time of Alanna saying nothing, just trembling against her mom, she whispers it for just Maeve to hear.

“It’s got swears in it,” she whispers, Maeve reassuring her that she won’t get in trouble if she repeats them, that she’d never get in trouble for telling them what happened to her.

“She said…” Alanna takes a deep, wet sounding breath, her fingers hurting they’re holding Maeve’s hands so tight. “She said Daddy had to teach me a lesson because I was just like…” She stops, eyes watching Maeve through her bangs, before staging whispering, “That I was just like every other _bitch_.” Maeve winces, a surge of hate and anger thrumming through her so hard that’s she so, so, _so_ fucking glad that Spencer killed this woman before she could. “And that Daddy should make me stop.”

“You mean he should punish you? Like a smack or a time-out?” the psychologist presses. Maeve, who has never smacked her children nor ever desired to, swallows hard against the idea of Spencer doing so, even against his will.

“Noooo,” Alanna draws out slowly, her shaking intensifying. “She said Daddy should make me _stop_. With the knife. But Daddy wouldn’t, so he made her stop with the knife instead. That’s the blood, see.”

Cold slams home. Maeve doesn’t hear what the psychologist says next through the humming in her ears, the realisation of what Lindsey Vaughn had intended for Spencer to do in that cabin.

When she leaves the office that day, Alanna walking by her side with more bounce in her step than she has since the attack, it’s to find Spencer sitting in the waiting room with his head in his hands and the weight of the world on his shoulders. Maeve looks at him and remembers the bruises all over him, the slashes from the knife, the confusion from the drugs. She remembers all this, and she looks at their daughter, who is still alive to remember how terrified she was.

And she takes the five steps between him and her and falls to her knees, wrapping him tight in a hug he doesn’t expect and crying helplessly against him as she tries and fails to find the words to thank him for how hard he fought to save their daughter. Despite her wordlessness, despite the tears, he seems to understand.

“I would never let anyone hurt her,” he whispers against her hair, and she absolutely believes him.

**September**

It all unravels in September. Spencer watches it happen while feeling like a spectator to his own life, it all just feels so unreal. Everything they tell him happened feels like it happened to someone else, if the evidence of it wasn’t all around him and inescapable: Lindsey gaining employment at his daughter’s day-care under an assumed name, luring him there by calling him to tell him Alanna was ill. The moment she’d used his distraction and lowered guard within the day-care walls to hit him with the scopolamine. From what they gather had happened next, she’d forced him into setting up her own abduction, using a shot of insulin between his toes to drop him into a hypoglycaemic black out. After that… well, that’s what he’s here to find out, isn’t he?

He can’t even really describe the events that lead him to this moment, seating in this cement interrogation room across from Cat fucking Adams, trying to find out why she tried to hard to see his daughter dead.

“Don’t you think Alanna Banana deserves to know the truth now?” Cat asks sweetly, and Spencer wants to slap her. He’s never wanted to hurt someone more than the woman in front of him, not even Lindsey. Lindsey he killed because he had to; Cat he just wants to hurt. “She’ll learn eventually, all men are the same. We usually learn it from our daddies, right? Love mapping? You should have done what you were told, Spencer. You should have made _sure_ that she knows you’re only going to hurt her, before she grows up fucked up over you.”

“Don’t call her that,” he says coldly.

“Oh, that pisses you off, doesn’t it? That I act like I know her? Well, honey, that’s because I _do_. I know you… you’re just like me. You like hurting people. You _loved_ killing Lindsey. And Alanna’s going to pick that up from you and, _hello_ , Daddy issues. She’s either going to grow up hating you or wanting to fuck you, you know this. Why can’t you see that I was helping?”

He has to step back from Spencer in that moment and become Reid through and through, because the part of him that’s a father wants to launch across the table. “What would you have done if it worked?” he asks, gesturing around them. “Look at you, Cat. You’re in a cage that I put you in. Would me being in a cage too really have helped that much?”

“Absolutely,” she responds, the honesty there clear in her eyes.

Reid cocks his head to the side and studies her intently, trying to read between the lines of what she is and isn’t saying. “You’re not even sad that Lindsey is dead, are you?” he notes. “Despite your relationship with her, you don’t care that she died, only that she failed at destroying me before she did. You really have nothing. Just a cage and the games you think you’re playing with me.”

“Oh, Spencey, I have something.” She leans forward, a smile on her lips that reminds him of a gun, loaded and ready to fire in all its dark glory. “Well, we do.”

And she lays her hands across her stomach.

“See?” she purrs as he stares bemused at her coveting hands, understanding the gesture but not quite connecting it to the games she’s playing. “Oh, you’ll break Alanna. I had Lindsey watching her you know, how sweet and _pretty_ she is, such a privileged little cunt. She’s going to be every other middle class cheerleading idiot, chasing her own daddy issues into disaster. She’s too _normal_ for you, Spencer, and she’ll always know it deep inside that no man can hurt her quite like her daddy can. But this baby?” Again with the hands, Reid watching her carefully. “This baby… she’s mine and yours, and she’ll be perfect. You can’t hurt what can’t feel, and she’ll be a sharp little sociopath… just like we are.”

“You’re pregnant.” He says it deadpan.

She replies just as emotionally. “ _We’re_ pregnant.”

And he leans back in his chair, eyes on her and knowing he’s just as cold as she thinks he is right now. “No, _you’re_ pregnant. That’s not mine.”

“Isn’t it?” Another loaded smile, one moment closer to the trigger. “Don’t you remember what she did to you while you were high? It must be terrifying for you to have so much lost… maybe you should ask your daughter. I told Lindsey to be sure she was watching, to make sure she knows you’re just a rutting animal like everyone else.”

That’s bait to distract him, but he doesn’t take it. It’s designed to hurt him deeply, attacking him through his daughter, but it’s also false. “You’re lying,” he says, making sure to smile back, a knife-smile to her gun. Sharper and crueller, not always fatal but unpredictably dangerous. “Want to know how I know?”

She narrows her eyes but doesn’t answer, so he leans forward and tells her anyway.

“Because Lindsey was good at what she did, and what she did was gather information. I had a vasectomy last year, Cat. There’s no way Lindsey didn’t know that. So either you’re lying, or she didn’t tell you, and my money is on you being a lying little bitch. This interview is over. I have what I need. Enjoy your cage.”

He gets up to leave, ignoring her final snarled barb. It sticks and hurts, but he refuses to let her see that so he doesn’t stop to look at her.

“What were you in that moment, Spencer? When you were killing her—were you a father or an agent? Or just a man who liked what he was doing?”

The door slamming shut between them isn’t enough of a barrier between them. It’s going to take a long time to rebuild the parts of him she’s broken down and left raw.

It’s a start though.

**October**

After the wild last few months, there’s always this tight wariness in Maeve’s chest when she opens her front door and walks in every night, waiting for something awful to happen. Lately, it just feels like everything that happens is something awful, beginning with Maurice dying setting off this whole, horrible year. So, on this day when she walks into the apartment that she’s come to hate because she can’t help but feel _watched_ now that they know Lindsey was right next door to them the whole time and she finds Spencer sitting at the kitchen table staring down at something placed there, she’s expecting that something awful.

“After all our talks,” Spencer says in a numb kind of voice that has her dropping her bag and pulling her arms around her stomach, like she’s trying to stop this terrible feeling from bringing her to her knees with the expectation of ‘we’re over’. “After all the time we spent trying to convince ourselves that we’re better than them, smarter and readier and, I don’t know… kinder. We weren’t really, were we? We’re just as selfish and small. Rather, I am. Selfish, always, and lying to myself to disguise it.”

“Spence, what are you talking about?” she manages to choke out, the pain in her stomach twisting up to clutch at her heart too. The something awful looms. Her bag has spilled open on the floor below her feet, Cheese patting her delicate paw at a tube of Chapstick rattling obscenely loudly on the floorboards. He should be at work. Where is Diana? He should be at work. His skin is grey and drawn, like he’s had a horrible shock, and he should be at work.

“I’ve missed my life,” he rasps, drawing whatever is on the table in front of him closer, fingers closing over it. Even from here, she can see they’re shaking. Is he drunk? “So busy trying to ram myself into the life I don’t fit in anymore, I’ve missed the life I should have been living. It was a mistake, going back.”

She pauses, swallowing as something loosens just a little, letting her breathe and think this through. She walks over there, managing not to stumble, and nudges Cheese out of the way so she can look more closely at him, and what he’s holding.

It’s her book. Dr. Maeve Donovan, PhD, emblazoned on the front. Even as she watches, he opens it and lays a finger on the publication date, late last year.

“I didn’t even know you finished it,” he says simply.

“I didn’t tell you. You were busy.”

Now those eyes turn to her, full of hurt and fear. “That’s the truth, isn’t it?” he says bitterly. “I’m too busy to learn you achieved a dream, that my wife hit a milestone so, so important to her I should have been there celebrating with her. I’m too busy to watch my son play violin for an audience of people. Don’t you see, Maeve? I did exactly what we were worried I would—I became _them_ , but none of us noticed because maybe I’ve been them all along. Alanna almost died and I’m still going back to work, just like Hotch after Foyet. My son is furious with me for allowing it to happen, but I still haven’t changed, I simply expect him to come around, even though Gideon and Stephen are clear warnings that that won’t happen. I’m losing track of my family’s lives—just like Rossi. Do you know what Caroline said to him before they separated? I do. He told me. People at work tell me things, I guess because I’m there so often that they forget I have a life outside of it—and she told him that he was cheating on her with the work and it was more damaging than if he’d been unfaithful with another woman. I didn’t understand then, but I do now. And I think… I think it’s time…” He stops and draws a shuddering breath, his entire body seeming to become small and sad in that second. “The FBI is my home, but it shouldn’t be. You guys should be. It should have always been you—that was the promise I made by the pond eleven years ago, and it’s a promise I haven’t kept. I’m so sorry, Maeve, I’m so so sorry for that.”

She crouches by his side and lets him fold himself into her arms, after all these years knowing exactly how to hold him. And there they stay, weathering this final storm together.

For their eleventh wedding anniversary, he comes home to her.

For good.

**November**

Emily already seems to know when Spencer walks in there, leaning back in her chair and sighing at the sight of him hovering by her door.

“We’re going to miss you so much,” she tells him, dropping the unit chief act immediately and standing to come over and hug him. He hugs her back just as tightly, nuzzling into the crook of her neck and wondering if he’s ever going to find friends as important as the ones he’s found here. “Morgan gone, and Hotch, now you… I feel like I’m the captain of a sinking ship, Spence. I don’t want to wake up one day and realise I’m surrounded by strangers.”

“Are you asking me to stay?” he asks her, his throat sore from talking, like it’s all he’s been doing even though he’s barely said a word today.

“Oh god no, this is the best thing for you. After Cat and everything… no, Spence. This is good.” Emily’s smile is tired and he looks past her to her desk, seeing Scratch’s file open there. “Scratch is still out there and he targeted you once—if you stay, you’re risking your family. They deserve safety.”

“I really am going to miss you,” he promises her. “This place… it’s my family.”

But she’s shaking her head at him, the same Emily smile he feels like he’s always known aimed firmly at him and somehow not even showing a hint of her exhaustion anymore. “No, it’s not. The FBI isn’t your family, Spence. We are. The people around you—Maeve and the kids, your mom, the team. They’re your family and they will never, ever leave you, no matter where you go or what you do. We’re never going to leave your side.”

“You’re stuck with us, buddy,” says Rossi from behind him, Spencer turning and not even being a little bit surprised to find him standing there. “Now, hurry your ass up and pretend that you’re surprised we got you a cake.”

Spencer blinks. “You guys knew. You _knew_ I was resigning today, didn’t you?”

“We’re profilers,” says Emily.

“What did you expect?” Rossi finishes.

And, laughing, Spencer follows them from the office, celebrating one last day at the BAU, and every other day he has coming as whatever he decides to do next. And they’re sure, every last one of them, that whatever he does will be fantastic.

**December**

Spencer vanishes from his goodbye party, so she goes looking for him, ducking through the long halls of Rossi’s mansion until she hears his voice floating out of a guest room. Outside, she can hear raucous laughter and the strange attempts of Ethan to flirt with Emily—something which everyone has warned him is a terrible idea on so many levels, the least of which is that she carries at least seven guns on her person at all times—but in here, the only salient sound is her husband’s voice.

And then she hears Sebby, her feet slowing as she listens in curiously to the conversation they’re having.

“You know why I’m leaving the FBI, don’t you?” Spencer asks in a soft tone, clothes rustling like they’re moving around.

“Yeah, I guess. You want to be home…”

“That’s part of it, yes. But you know why I want to be home, don’t you?”

“Is it because of what happened to Alanna?”

Maeve inches closer yet, her heart in her throat and thumping away with how much she loves these people—and her daughter, who is outside assisting Ethan in attempting to seem like a family man by telling Emily how good a god-dad he is. While Maeve doesn’t fully appreciate Ethan using their daughter to attempt to pick up, she does enjoy how willing Alanna is to speak kindly of him. It reaffirms the friendship that they all treasure and have since those college days.

“A little bit, but not completely. Seb, look at me. Come here. Do you know what I promise you? Right now, do you know what I promise you?”

His words are interrupted by rustling again—paper, Maeve realises, not clothes. They have paper. Bursting with curiosity, she teeters between staying out here and peering in.

“I promise you that I’m going to do better. No one, not anyone in the world, is ever going to come between me and my family again, I promise.”

“But what about the families you have to help? Who will help them now?”

“Someone will. There’s always another hero, Sebby. Always. People are hardwired to help—if I’m not there, someone else will be. I’m needed at home, with you guys, and that’s absolutely okay—it’s not selfish to want me there. And I’m never going to let anyone hurt you, or Alanna, again. Is that what you wanted to hear?”

“Yes.” Sebby’s voice is throaty and thick, a loud sniff sounding. “Thanks, Dad.”

She can’t do it anymore—she has to look. Through the door she tiptoes, finding Spencer with Sebby in his arms, hugging him tight and the both of them surrounded by paper boats.

“Hey, hon,” Spencer says upon seeing her, Seb peering at her from under his arm. “I’m teaching Sebby how to make boats so he can show Henry. Do you want to help us carry these outside?”

She’s never wanted anything more.  

And it’s an ending, she’s sure, but also the beginning of the rest of their lives.


	13. 2027

**January**

When Sebastian is seventeen, he plays violin at his grandmother’s funeral. Maeve is stunned that her mom lasted this long, and she isn’t the only one. It helps that this is so expected, that the extra years they had with her were so treasured, because there are more smiles than tears as they say goodbye to her—in stark contrast to the heartbreak they’d faced three years before, when farewelling Diana Reid.

They hold the reception at their home. A far cry from their apartments of old, the house they’d bought together years ago has seen their children grow and their family shrink slowly. Maeve walks through the rooms upstairs, looking in on Sebastian’s room—which will soon be empty, as he graduates his senior year and leaves for college—and Alanna’s, which in three years will be much the same. There are band posters on the walls of them both, Seb’s room filled with instruments and music sheets, Alanna’s filled with trophies and sports and cookbooks. Both of them have enough reference books to educate a small classroom, Spencer’s influence. Alanna has a diagram of the human brain over her bed—Maeve likes to think that’s all her.

And she’s sad that her mom won’t be here to see Seb turn eighteen, or Alanna turn fifteen, or her turn fifty… but she’s glad she lasted just long enough to meet just one more Reid.

When Maeve opens the door to Diana’s-room-turned-office-turned-nursery, she finds Spencer already in there, the baby in his arms and rocking her with a bottle to her mouth and making sleepy noises as she feeds. The song he’s humming is the one Sebastian played at the funeral, and Maeve feels tears burn at the sound of it. The walls are still lined with his mother’s books, one lined with boxes, and they know soon April will be old enough that they’ll have to consider turning this into her room completely, sweeping out the whispers of Diana’s presence.

But it’s time now to say goodbye to everyone they’ve loved and lost. They put the baby back to bed together and tiptoe down to join their family in the front yard, a small, huddled crowd of people rugged up tight against the cold. And in the dark and the snow, each of them holds a candle and each of them says goodbye. Alanna hugging her dad and Sebby standing by Maeve, so much taller than her now with his eyes tipped to the sky and the candlelight lining his father’s jawline on his face.

“Bye, Grandma,” Alanna says first, blowing out her candle.

“We’ll always miss you,” says Maeve’s father, closing his eyes as his own candle burns low. Alone now, except not really. Maeve takes his hand, Alanna his arm.

And life goes on for those left to live it.

**February**

It’s been a while since he’s woken up to a phone call in the middle of the night, but the instinct is still there. Before Maeve has even roused, he’s pulling on his pants and socks and reaching for his keys, the phone still to his ear as he takes down the details in his memory.

“Who was that?” she asks him when he hangs up, a low whine from down the hall announcing that April is awake and hungry.

“Ellen, with CPS,” he tells her, kneeling back on the bed to kiss his wife goodbye. “They’ve got a child down at the DCPD needing emergency care and our name came up. I’m going to get him. Can you get the spare room ready?”

“How old?” she asks without even hesitating, sliding out of bed and going for her bathrobe. For a single second, he appreciates her body—even at just shy of fifty, she’s still gorgeous to him and always will be—and then he snaps back to what’s important. “I thought we were only down for one kid at a time, and we have April.”

“Ten, and I guess they’re not really counting April as a foster anymore.” He smiles as he says this, seeing a similar expression dance across her face. They’d known the moment Emily had called them to tell them they had a case with an orphaned newborn and no listed foster carers available: it was only a matter of time and paperwork before April Halladay became April Reid. “I’ll be back. Love you.”

“Drive safe,” she tells him. It’s a small thing, but he treasures it, because ‘drive safe’ is a lot easier to do than ‘come home’ had used to be when he’d worked for the FBI. And here he is, ten years on from the day he’d walked out of those doors—still making a difference, one life at a time.

The new kid is tall and skinny, the kind of skinny that comes with not being loved or fed. Spencer walks into the room, takes one look at him hunched there with a book on his knees, and knows that Alanna’s first thought upon meeting him is going to be to feed him. And he doesn’t say a word the whole drive home, even when Spencer takes him inside the sleeping house to show him the way around.

Blue eyes watch everything, his backpack hugged to his chest like it’s all he owns in the world. Spencer doesn’t know his background yet, only the specifics he’d been told over the phone. There’s a chance that backpack _is_ all he owns and, as Spencer watches him stare at the photos of Spencer’s family all over the wall—all of his family, including the seven permanent foster kids they’ve taken in over the past ten years and the countless temporary ones, all of whom found their place on the wall—he seems torn.

“Hey, Dan?” Spencer calls gently as Maeve comes down the stairs, pausing when she sees them. “This is my wife, Maeve. You’re safe here, okay? We’re going to look after you.”

After a few weeks, Dan even comes to believe that.

And another photo goes on the wall.

**March**

Of course, it’s David Rossi who talks her into it, wheedling one of his favourite bookstores into running a book signing for the both of them. It goes a lot better than Maeve had expected honestly, especially when Dave buys a stack of her books, gets her to sign them, then vanishes to give them out to random passers-by. It’s an act of generosity that makes her smile, even when she points out that he didn’t have to buy them to give them away—she would have covered it.

“Nonsense,” he says to her with a grin that’s far younger than he is these days. “You’ve got those kids and that husband to feed, and god knows we all know Reid’s coffee intake must cost you a small fortune.”

She laughs at this and reassures him that he’s not _wrong._

Throughout the day, familiar faces pop through. She sees JJ and the kids, Henry doing much the same as Sebastian and rudely growing taller than his mother. Hank appears at one point, excited when he realises that her newest release is co-authored by her and his godfather.

“I didn’t know Uncle Spencer could write!” he announces to anyone who’ll listen. “Man, wait until I see him next!”

Her children show up, Dan tagging after Sebastian. Alanna looks bored within seconds of walking into the bookstore. She likes books, but only when given to her by one of her family members to read—when given a bookstore or library to roam free in, she loses interest quickly, the exact opposite of Sebastian who even has his own chair in the one closest to their home. In a lull between curious customers, Maeve watches her son and foster child, seeing the way Dan looks to Seb for guidance and how easily Seb gives that reassurance. It’s comforting to see them making a connection, even if she wonders how Dan is going to take it when Seb leaves for college—if he’s still with them then, which she suspects he might be. Despite his asking every night about when his parents can have him back, the information Spencer and her have been getting from CPS isn’t promising on that front.

Despite this, she’s sure that, in the end, they’ll do what’s best for him. And he’s a good kid with a good heart—he fits in just fine.

**April**

Alex Blake asks him in to guest lecture; he agrees, on one condition—one that she’s happy to grant. And that’s how he finds himself lecturing on psychopathology with the baby fast asleep in a sling on his chest, having to hide a grin every time he turns around and sees an audible _aw_ flicker through his rapt audience. It becomes a regular thing, with Alex shaking her head at the inordinately high retention rates of the lectures he speaks in.

“You know, I could hold her for you while you lecture,” she teases him after as they sit in her office, April crawling on the floor and looking for interesting things to touch. “I think you’re a bit of a show-off, Spencer Reid.”

“Hey, I object,” he responds with mock innocence. “Me, using my poor orphaned adopted daughter to increase my academic standing? Why, Professor Blake, I’ve never been so insulted!” But he’s laughing and she is too, and the agreement continues without change—Spencer sure that April’s going to be, by the end of it, the only eight month old with course credits in psycho-linguistics.

As he’s leaving one day, a bunch of students catch up to him. They ask him what it was like working for the BAU and he looks at each and every one of them, wondering which of them will make it and which of them, like Ethan, will realise their calling is actually in a completely different direction.

“The second best time of my life,” he says finally, seeing the ambition clear in the eyes around him.

“Do you regret leaving?” asks one of them, a small girl with mousey hair and a shy smile.

“Not even for a minute,” he tells her honestly, April waking a little in his arms and babbling into his ear, her hand reaching dangerously for his hair. Readjusting her, he continues, “I made a difference there and I’ll never regret that—but I haven’t stopped making a difference just because I’ve put down my gun. Remember that—it’s okay to realise you’re needed elsewhere.”

They don’t seem to get that, but Spencer knows: one day, they will.

**May**

Sebastian graduates and Maeve isn’t ashamed to cry with pride for him as he stands up there, arm around his best friend and grin so wide and happy she can barely compute him with the shy toddler who hadn’t even walked regularly until he was almost four because he didn’t like the attention it got him. Simon looks just as happy, and it’s silly how much she cries for him too, Seb’s best friend since he was thirteen and almost the fifth biological member of their household, when she thinks back over every important date of the last ten years and realises he was there for most of them. And this one too—later that night, as the boys dress ready for prom, Seb admits that they’re both going together— “You know how much I hate dating, Mom,” he grumbles when she teases him gently about being too shy to use his musical skills to lure a girl with him. “I don’t need to lure anyone. You make it sound like a _trap_.”

“Oh, it is,” she jokes, winking at her husband. “Your father literally tripped me over—made sure I was vulnerable right from the start.”

“Excuse me?” Spencer mock-scowls, looking up from where he’s wrestling with the camera just in time to help Simon knot his tie. “I’ll have you all know that your mother pursued _me_. I was an innocent, barely eighteen.”

“You met your wife at eighteen?” Simon asks suddenly, his voice oddly intent. Alanna looks up from the couch, shooting Seb a strange look that Maeve doesn’t quite understand. “Did you know straight away that she was, um, I don’t know… the person you wanted to be with? Forever?”

“No,” Maeve cuts in with a laugh. “I’m pretty sure Spencer thought he was going to end up living in Ethan’s cupboard for the rest of his life, with George the ceramic gremlin…”

That’s the end of any serious talk for the evening as they chase their newly graduated son and other-son out of the house, making them both promise to come home safely.

“You know that they’re—” Alanna says as soon as the door closes behind them, but Spencer puts his hand up and silences her, Dan looking from one to the other as though wondering what soundless communication is happening here.

“That’s not your secret to tell,” Spencer tells her firmly, waiting for her nod before lowering his hand. “Now, how about we go and find the bucket he’s inevitably going to need when he comes home completely inebriated?”

**June**

At some point, he’d gotten suckered into coaching Alanna’s baseball team, and it surprises no one more than himself when he leads them to a rousing victory in the growing heat of June. As his team swirl around him in a shrieking ceremony of celebratory teenage girls, he avoids being caught up in the wave by catching the fence with his hand and keeping a lookout for one wild burst of bright red among the wave of brown and blonde and black. He sees her ponytail before he sees the rest of her, the mass of curls tied up and shoved through the back of her cap—and then he has to put his arms up to catch _her_ as Alanna hurtles into his arms screaming louder than Sebby has ever screamed in his life, even as a baby.

But that’s okay, because he’s yelling too, caught up in the moment and the win and the excitement.

“I did it!” he yells, jumping a bit with her jumping with him, catching sight of Morgan and Rossi both cheering them on in the stands, Maeve barely visible beside them. “I mean, we did it! Woo! Go us, go team! We did it!”

“Great job, Coach,” Alanna cheers, suddenly laughing in a way that he doesn’t quite trust, not after the Scouting incident. “You know what’s coming up, right?”

He shakes his head slowly.

“Basketball season! Ready to do it all over again?!”

“How many sports _are_ there?” he asks her in horror, but she just laughs and doesn’t answer, dragging him after her to go congratulate the other team. He wonders: what did he ever do to deserve such a sporty kid?

**July**

Ethan turns forty-seven in July and, honestly, she never expected the man to grow this old. They’re sitting in the jazz lounge he owns in New Orleans and Ethan’s telling the story of how he saved Spencer’s life when he was twenty-two to an enraptured crowd of their children, Dan’s mouth hanging open in fascination, Seb looking sceptical, and Alanna bouncing in her seat with excitement.

“But that’s so _brave_ ,” she declares. “You’re so brave, Uncle Eth. I bet Dad wishes he was as brave as you.”

“Oh, he can try, but it’s hard being this heroic,” Ethan responds with a wink, earning a snort from Spencer. “I’m not sure that your dad has the stones.”

“Hey.” Spencer’s pouting, and Maeve can’t help but laugh at that, wondering just how much of Spencer’s work her kids remember. Sebastian, she suspects, knows more than he lets on.

“Hey, but enough of that—Seb, get up with me. Play for my patrons. I’m old now, I need a backing track.” Ethan grabs Seb’s arm, hauling him up to the stage with only token complaints from the seventeen-year-old. Seb’s long grown out of his shyness, Maeve beaming to see him pick up the violin Ethan had demanded he bring with him and bow for the people turning to watch him play. Music is in his blood like books are in Spencer’s, and she’s always loved to see his expression fade into focused joy when he plays. Ethan plays along on the piano beside him, Spencer watching them both while bouncing April on his knee. Alanna seems disinterested, picking up her cell and tapping away instead of looking at her brother. Dan, in stark comparison, looks longing, eyes hungry below his straight, dark bangs.

There’s a shout behind them, Maeve’s name called, and she turns to find her old friend Carly hurtling towards her. “How the hell are you!” she shouts, flapping her hands at both Maeve and Spencer to encompass both of them in that. “Wow, damn. You got old, love—we all got old! But still gorgeous. Are these yours? Where’d the black hair come from? And a baby! How?!”

Maeve is laughing too hard to respond at first, sliding further into the booth to let Carly in beside her. Time is lost to catching up, the last ten years tumbling into half an hour of talking… until she looks around to realise there’s no one but Alanna holding April beside her, Spencer and Dan gone. Panicked for a second, she looks around—until Carly touches her arm and points.

They’re on stage with Ethan, Dan following Spencer’s hands as he patiently teaches him to play. The small group of people around the bar and lounges are calling advice and encouragement, Ethan leaned against the instrument and watching with a fond expression on his face. And Dan looks happier than he’s ever looked before, the shades of the abuse he’d suffered before coming to them finally fading from his eyes as he focuses on something new.

“Anyway, heard you’re writing books,” Carly is saying while watching them play. “ _Fiction_ books, Doctor Science, what’s that about! Never pegged you for a fairy tale author.”

Maeve flushes, but says the same thing she’d said five years ago when she’d decided to try her hand at writing fiction too: “I’m not just logic and brains, Carly,” she says softly. “And neither is life… there’s magic too.”

Carly looks at her like she’s surprised, like Maeve is still able to surprise her. “I never thought you’d be the kind of person who believed in magic.”

That’s easy to answer. Maeve looks once again at her husband. “Married to him?” she points out. “How could I _not_.”

After all, there’s nothing about this life that’s mediocre.

**August**

Alanna’s fifteenth birthday is spent on the road, driving Simon and Sebastian to college. It’s a loud car, with Spencer driving and wondering what he’s going to do without his co-researcher to keep him company on the long nights conferencing from home. How many midnight coffees he’s going to have to have alone now that Seb will be gone, how lonely and disused the chessboard in his office will be…

He only realises that everyone is looking at him when he notices that the car has gone silent, looking around to find them all staring at him, all three of them. “What?” he asks. “Do I have something on my face?”

“Are you _crying_?” Alanna asks from the passenger seat, a smile slowly appearing. “Oh my gosh, Dad, you _are_ , you’re such a sap! He’s going to college, not Alaska!”

“Massachusetts might as well be Alaska,” Spencer points out, defending his sappiness. “Aren’t you even a little bit sad he’s leaving?”

“Nope, not even a bit,” Alanna lies. Spencer knows she’s lying—her mouth twitches at the corner. He smiles, sure that she’ll admit it later, when it’s just her and Seb and no one to call her a sap. She’s careful like that.

“We’re going to be fine, Dad, I promise,” says Sebby from the backseat, meeting Spencer’s eyes in the rear-view mirror.

“Yeah, I’ll look after him!” chirps Simon. “I _promise_.”

Reminded suddenly of Ethan, Spencer has to choke back a laugh and a warning about spur of the moment earrings that he’s sure none of them will really understand.

**September**

The weather is turning cold this night, as she drives home late and finds a sleeping house awaiting her. With one longing look towards Sebastian’s darkened bedroom as she walks up the front drive, she wonders how he’s going and if he misses them yet…

Inside, Cheese is waiting, _brrrrping_ at her when Maeve whispers hello. There’s cobwebs all over her head, but she zooms off when Maeve tries to catch her to clean them. Shaking her head, Maeve leaves her to play her spidery games and tiptoes towards a thin light trickling out from under the door of the living room. There she finds her husband, asleep on the couch with a blanket thrown over him, and she finds Dan. He’s sitting in front of the dying fire, writing in his schoolbook with a frustrated frown on his face.

“Hey there,” Maeve greets him, tiptoeing over to have a look at what he’s doing. “Shouldn’t you be in bed?”

“This is due tomorrow,” Dan admits guiltily, freckled face white with nerves. This fear response breaks her heart every time she sees it, but it’s going to take longer than a few months to shake. She just makes sure to smile, so he knows she’s not mad at him for leaving it to the last minute, sitting beside him and turning the book towards her when he nods. “Uh. It’s a writing assignment. Spencer was helping me, but he was super, super tired and I think he fell asleep.”

Spencer, with perfect timing, snores softly.

“My family,” Maeve reads, and winces. Oh dear. “Well, what does the assignment say you have to write about?”

“The things I love about my family.” He stares at the book, mouth turned down. “I wrote a bit but I don’t know if it’s right…”

Maeve can do this. She has a doctorate—how hard can a ten-year-old’s homework assignment really be?

“Read what you have to me and we’ll see what we can do,” she says with confidence.

And he does, but it’s not at all what she expected. In fact, he doesn’t talk about his family at all. Instead, he reads to her a passage about how much he loves _this_ family and all the strange, wonderful things they do. She’s so surprised by this that it takes her a moment to realise what strange and wonderful things he’s describing—it’s Spencer learning sports that he hates just so he can be there for Alanna and it’s Sebby learning to dance because it’s something his mother loves and it’s Alanna reading all her brother’s favourite books so they have something to talk about over the dinner table. It’s small things, like the fact that Alanna still reads to her brother even though he’s grown and moved away, talking to him over the headset on her laptop with a book propped beside her screen. It’s Spencer teaching Dan piano and the fact that they know his favourite foods and that he prefers longer socks to short.

It’s all the small things that make a family, and she realises that they’re strange to him because he’s never had them before.

Later that night, assignment finished and Dan in bed, Maeve wakes Spencer and leads him to the bedroom. As soon as the door is closed and her sleepy husband poured into the bed, she crawls in beside him and asks him if, just maybe, he wouldn’t mind the spare room being filled permanently after all.

And he’s half asleep, but smiles _yes_ anyway.

They’re really not very good at being foster parents, if measured on their success in saying goodbye.

**October**

In October, they’ve been married for twenty-two years. It seems impossible that so much life has been lived; impossible, and thrilling, as is the thought that there’s so much life left yet.

Spencer finds his wife much the same as she always has been, except for where she’s changed and grown beside him. The lines around her eyes are much the same as the lines around his; she’s amused that he’s the first to find grey hair. The years have carved lines around their mouths in the shape of their smiles, and Spencer finds that he loves kissing her the same as he always has, knowing that every smile they’ve shared is something to treasure.

She gives him a tiny copper boat that he keeps upon his desk.

He gives her a shallow cup made of copper with two handles: a quaich cup, he tells her. The lover’s cup. It’s silly and beautiful and she loves him so much for it.

The sex is much the same as it always has been, but they don’t really care. It’s not the night to be adventurous, when they’re busy looking back fondly on every path they’ve walked together. They’re not twenty anymore and their bodies are slower than they were, but they don’t need to be young to know they still love.

They wonder if their park has changed as much as they have over the years, but they don’t go down there to check. There’s no need. In their memories and the photos of their wedding on the wall, the park is immortalised as it always has been.

**November**

Seb and Simon come home for Thanksgiving. It’s only been three months, really, since they left, but Maeve immediately knows something has changed with them. It’s no surprise at all that Simon stays with them over Thanksgiving, his own family disinterested at best, but it is a surprise what comes next.

Seb asks them out onto the porch with him, just her and his father, and they already know what he’s going to say before he says it—but like Spencer’s always said, it’s up to Seb to decide when he’s comfortable telling him. They can’t force it.

“Me and Simon, uh, we’re…” he manages, trailing off with his face almost as red as his hair. Maeve doesn’t know what to say to make this easier, so she just stays quiet.

Spencer, however, always excels when he’s needed. “Seb, it’s okay,” he says gently. “You know it’s okay. You’re always going to be our son, no matter what—don’t be scared of that.”

Seb nods and charges ahead: “We’ve, uh, been dating since we were… fifteen. And I always thought you’d be okay but I didn’t want it to change anything and, well, he couldn’t tell his parents so I guess I just figured me not telling you guys would be… fair. Sorry. But we’re okay, right?”

And they knew this—have known it all along—but this is still an important moment for them. “We’re okay,” they promise him, just like they absolutely always have.

That’s not the surprising thing. It’s not even really unexpected, although Maeve will always be thankful that he’s finally coming out of his shell and to terms with who he is as a person—because they’ve always loved him far more than he loves himself, and that breaks her heart to see.

The surprising thing is what comes next.

“So, me and Seb have been thinking,” says Simon over dinner, interrupting Alanna and Seb’s growing argument on whether dragons would be anarchists or socialists. “About changing our majors, maybe. I mean… we’ve been doing some reading and we went to a guest lecture by some lady Seb says you guys know, and it was really fascinating.”

“Oh, really?” Spencer asks, unaware of what’s coming. “Who was the guest lecturer?”

And Seb grins guiltily and answers, “Auntie Emily.”

Later, Spencer declares: if Seb joins the FBI because of Emily, he’ll kill her, or at the very least shout quite a bit. Maeve just sighs and knows it’s probably inevitable now that they’ve been attracted to the idea.

After all, Seb’s always had his father’s heart.

**December**

That Christmas, everyone is there. The family he’s made and the family he found. It’s their first Christmas without Maeve’s mom and their third without Diana, and they’ve had candles made for both of them that stay lit all night. More drinks in than he’s equipped to handle and giddy with how much he loves the people around this table, Spencer looks at each and every one of them and feels thankful for every significant event in his significant life that has lead to this moment, with these people, his family.

There’s a paper boat on the Christmas tree, dancing in the breeze of people passing, and it’s the most important one he’s ever made: twenty-eight years ago, he gave it to a woman with a kind smile and umbrella and changed his life forever. It’s a lucky boat, it always has been, even if the paper is now curled and yellow with age. And, on this night, its last Christmas while everyone is celebrating, the string holding it to the tree snaps and it whirls down down down to fall unnoticed upon the fire.

In that last moment of being a boat, as the flames make the paper jump and curl, it seems alive.

It seems significant.  

**Author's Note:**

> I love to hear from you guys. Leave a comment or come chat with us on the [Criminal Minds Discord server](https://discord.gg/kPxKjaE) (don't be shy by how quiet we are--we love new people to talk to!). I also run weekly rewatch threads both on the server and over at the /r/[criminalminds on Reddit](https://www.reddit.com/r/criminalminds/), so come along and join in the small community there. Hope to see some new faces!


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